The Yeerk's Last Stand
by musicman88
Summary: OC's. After the war with the Yeerks ended everyone on Earth thought that they'd heard the last of them. But they were wrong. Dead wrong. Now, thirty years after the war was presumed to be “over”, a Yeerk colony is once again beginning to spread...
1. Chapter 1

The Yeerk's Last Stand

**Summary: **After the war with the Yeerks ended everyone on Earth thought that they'd heard the last of them. But they were wrong. Dead wrong. Now, thirty years after the war was presumed to be "over", a Yeerk colony is once again beginning to spread. Fast. And once again it's up to a group of kids to stop them before it's too late. But will they be enough this time? Will they be as successful as the original Animorphs?

_Thought-speak in italics_

[Explanations of future technology or events will be in brackets]

Chapter 1

My name is Adam Wetowski. I'm seventeen years old, about 5'10'', and slightly chubby at 180lbs. I have brown eyes and long black hair. I'm into rock music and can play a variety of instruments, but if I had to choose a main one it would be the drums. Although I kind of look like the stereotypical "rocker" I'm actually fairly shy and quiet most of the time. I go to Pleasant Valley High School and I'm in the 12th grade. My home address is 1342 Valley Rd in Gilbert, Pennsylvania. My cell number is (610) 681-6766 and my social security number is 160-42-8752.

Why am I being so careless with my personal information? Well, I'm not worried about it since you'll never meet me. Ever. No matter what you do. Oh sure you might meet someone with the same name, description, and maybe even same social security number at some point in the future, but that's not truly me.

You see, I'm from the future. I was born July 8th 2017 and since I'm 17 now that would make it 2034. Now, I know what you must be thinking and no, life isn't like it's shown on _The Jetsons_ yet. And this message wasn't sent to describe every new invention or how every sports team has done in the past 20 years either. This message was sent as a warning. If the following starts to sound familiar then you could be in grave danger.

Around forty years ago (around 20 counting from your time) the invasion of Earth began. The invaders weren't little green men from Mars or anything that friendly, they were a parasitic alien species called "The Yeerks". They basically crawl into another organism's brain and take full control over the physical portion of it. Since their natural form resembles a slug they're pretty pathetic on their own. They need hosts, or "controllers" as everyone calls them, to do anything useful at all. And once they began to figure out that they could control other people's bodies they did what every other known civilization has tried to do: gain power by taking over as many resources as possible. And in the Yeerk's attempt at total conquest of all other races they eventually stumbled onto our little planet. Even though they may be slug-like in appearance that doesn't mean they're stupid though. They didn't come in with guns blazing and take everything by force. Not for a while anyway. They were after hosts more than anything else. Killing off a large number of humans wouldn't have been the best plan. So at first they came in stealthily and slowly started to build some hidden infrastructure. They kept everything everything hidden from the public while they began to accumulate some hosts.

They would've become unstoppable if not for one small thing. A mini battle was fought in Earth's orbit in the year 1996. It was between the Yeerks and their galactic foes the Andalites. One of the damaged Andalite ships managed to make it down to the surface of Earth and crash landed into a construction site. And it just so happened that five kids were walking through the site at the same time. They met up with this Andalite and in his desperation he gave them the ultimate Andalite weapon - the power to change into any animal they touch – so they could fight against the Yeerk invasion themselves. And after a few years of brutal fighting they finally managed to win.

After the war was over the Yeerks were given two options: either die (always a valid option) or give up their bodies and become snakes. (There's a glitch in the Andalite "morphing" technology that makes it possible to do that. If you remain in a "morph" for too long, exactly two hours and thirty-three seconds, then your body stays that way permanently.)

It took a few weeks to track down all the Yeerks on Earth and let them decide what they wanted to do, but after those few weeks the Global Extra-Terrestrial Emancipation Team (Pronounced GET E.T.) finally made the announcement that there were no more natural Yeerks on planet Earth. Most of the information they needed they got from high-ranking Yeerk prisoners. That was enough to shut down most Kandrona Ray Emitters and starve most of the Yeerks out of hiding. (The Yeerks need Kandrona Rays to survive. It's kind of like light is to plants.) In conjunction with the Andalites the Team also developed ways of locating artificial Kandrona Ray Emitters by their... emissions which helped uncover the smaller and more secretive groups formed after the war ended. (Some Yeerks weren't too happy with their choices and weren't ready to give up the fight.) But the Team's methods weren't as full proof as they thought.

About six months after they said there were no more Yeerks on the planet Earth a small, still active, colony of Yeerks in Calgary, Alberta Canada was detected. Once their secret was out they all fought to the death in order to protect their species from extinction. It was a bloody massacre of innocent controllers by the ETF, but it was the only way to deal with those who didn't want to be dealt with.

[Humans were content with getting all the Yeerks in their natural forms off the planet Earth, but the Andalites had insisted on wiping them out as a race completely. Even on their own homeworld they gave them the choice to become stuck in a morph before poisoning their pools. They still had some cleaning up left to do, but Yeerks were very close to becoming extinct once and for all.]

After the Alberta Incident was cleared up it sparked another wave of Yeerk searches, but no more Yeerk colonies were found. After a few years people slowly grew confident in the fact that all the Yeerks were finally gone. They were wrong.

The reason I'm writing this message is to tell you that there's still one, at least one, hidden Yeerk colony that's still active right now. It's been hidden for over thirty years at my point in time, but I'm hoping that, with the right information, you can deal with them in your time while they're still weak. If you wait until my time then there will be drastic consequences. At the very least my timeline counterpart will have to go through the same two years of hell that I've been through.

Within the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania (draw a line straight North from Philadelphia and straight West from New York City. Roughly where they meet are the Pocono Mountains) lies a place called "The Birches". It's not really a town or anything, it's more of a community. It's fairly big in size and is separated into East and West (North and South in the year 2034 as well). It's prized as a sort of "private" community although there are no real fences or boundaries or anything like that. All of the rich people live there and it's regarded as the best place to live for miles around. Doctors, lawyers, and even some politicians make their homes there. It's where everyone, if they had the opportunity, would want to live. But it holds a dark secret. Everyone who lives there has a Yeerk in their head. And there's an active Yeerk Pool hidden deep below the ground.

How do I know this? Well, I've seen it. With my own eyes. Many more times than I would've liked to. And I've also seen the shells of humans that have been controllers for way too long. And... I've also seen just how fiercely they'd fight to keep their cause alive and secret. If the things in this message seem familiar so far then you've got one hell of a task ahead of you... even if you have a twenty year head start on us.

Those Yeerks aren't simply going to admit everything and become snakes if you ask them nicely. They'll deny it. They'll deny everything I have said in this message so far about them. And they're good at hiding it too. They've kept themselves hidden for ten years in your time and that's not an easy thing to do when everyone's out looking for them. You need to be serious and swift with them. Your normal Kandrona Ray Emission Detectors won't work above ground because of the layers of coal underground interfere with the signals. You need to bring in some serious ground penetrating radar or something so you can find the entrances to the pool. (I can't help you by saying where all of them are because I'm not sure when each one was created, but most of them are hidden well in the basements of people's houses.) And you must act quickly. With this message going out into the public they'll be working extra hard to cover up what they can. And maybe they'll even move everything somewhere else and start from scratch. And if that happens I really can't help you then. You need to act now. It should be much easier to take them down since they only have a ten year head start instead of a thirty year one, but you MUST do it now. I know firsthand what will happen if you don't.

Like I said before I'm from the future, but I'm not from your future. I'm from a "parallel" future if you want to call it that.

[Although "parallel" isn't quite the best description. They never quite cross, but they're not continuous straight lines either. At times they get closer and farther apart. At least that's what 2034 physics says.]

Like it or not going back in time is physically impossible. There is no physical way to reverse the flow of time. You can slow it down and almost stop it if you go fast enough, but that's only relative to your surroundings. And, regardless of your surrounding, it can't reverse it's flow no matter what you do. That's why I simply can't send this message "back in time" and have everything work out well during my time. What's happened to me has happened to me and there's no changing it. The only reason I'm sending this warning it to save _you_ some trouble in your future.

It's possible (although not with 2034 Earth technology, but I had a little extra help) to send small amounts of data to other "dimensions". And if those dimensions are lined up properly then your message will be transferred "back in time". That's the goal. That's what I'm hoping ends up happening. But there's no way of telling how much your own dimension resembles another one. They're falsely called "parallel" dimensions but they're not usually so parallel. We have to hope that the information in this message is relevant in some way, and probability laws state that there must be SOMEONE out there who can benefit from this information.

Many of the dimensions this document is being sent to are nothing more than globs of disordered energy. Some of them however have calmed down and formed matter. Some of those have formed suns and planets and everything else you know. Some of those have a planet Earth and in some of those it's actually inhabitable. On some of those inhabitable Earths people have formed and on some of those Earths people have evolved into what they are today. And now we get down to the minor details. In some of these Earths there are different nations. In some of these Earths a different president was elected. In some of these Earths you don't exist, or, if you do, then you ate something different for breakfast this morning. But, going by the law of probability, there's enough dimensions that some of them must be very close, if not exact matches, to my own. And as long as I can save at least one life then writing this all down was worth it. And if things _do_ sound familiar and you _do _find a secret Yeerk colony nestled in "The Birches" then countless lives have already been saved.

The following is the story of what will happen if you don't act on the information provided in this warning message. Consider the following the greatest warning of all. The following is our story.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

It all started on an extremely normal day. (Doesn't it always?) I woke up at 6:00 A.M., caught the bus to school at around 7:00 A.M., and first period started at around 7:15 A.M. However, it was right after second period ended that things began to get weird.

As always I was zoned out while walking to my next class. Everything around me seemed nice and normal. I'd taken this walk many times and I had no indication that anything unusual was about to happen. But all of a sudden my mind came back to me when I realized that some guy had stopped directly in front of me. Since it was too late to actually stop myself from hitting him I put my hands up to brace for impact, but as my hands made contact with his back I felt no resistance. I stumbled forward a bit before catching my balance... _inside_ the other person. Seeing his brain up close freaked me out quite a bit and I jumped back out of him as quickly as I could.

It took me a moment to compose myself before I realized what was really happening. Almost everything around me had stopped moving. It was like the hallway was frozen in time. But that was the least of my worries at that point. My biggest concern was that the hallway appeared to be disintegrating all around me. It was like everything was made of dry sand and some non-existent wind was slowly blowing it all away into nothingness. I slowly reached out my hand to touch the locker next to me and my hand slid inside effortlessly through the solid metal door. That was freaky enough on its own, but as the locker slowly blew away my hand became visible once again. I quickly held it up to my face as if I was expecting to see some sort of mark or injury on it, but it was exactly the same as when I first slid it through the locker.

It was then that I really began to get a bit freaked out. I shifted my gaze from my hand to staring straight ahead and saw... nothing. It was just dark blue with a few swirls of lighter blue here and there. I turned around behind me and thankfully saw something I could recognize. It seemed that I wasn't the only one going through all of this. I didn't count at the time, but I saw six other kids who were just as confused as I was... along with the quickly fading remnants of the hallway's tile flooring. But once that was all gone we were simply left there floating in space. None of us could really say anything since we were all still in shock from what just happened. All we could do was silently gaze at one another while trying to look for some sort of landmark out in the dark blue space.

Just as I thought someone was getting ready to say something a bright white dot suddenly appeared on my far right and began to extend upwards into a vertical line. After going vertical for some time the line made a ninety degree turn and went horizontal for a bit before turning back down once again. Eventually it formed a somewhat large outline of a rectangle. If I had to guess it was about five feet across by ten feet high. And then, all of a sudden, the rectangle began to swing open to reveal a blinding white light. All of us quickly covered our eyes until the "door" began to close and the light faded. When our eyes readjusted to the "normal" light of the room we looked up to see... a wizard standing in front of the now fading rectangle. He looked just like Merlin the Magician looked in the movie.

[In the year 2029 they made a series of movies on King Arthur lore that did tremendously well. Much like _The Lord of the Rings _series in your time.]

He had on a tall blue pointy hat along with a blue robe. His head was awash with long white hair. It fell down his back and around his shoulders while his long white beard stretched down to his bellybutton. And to complete the look he seemed very old and was also carrying some sort of staff.

"I apologize if the light was too bright," he said in an old raspy voice.

There was a moment of silence as everyone was busy trying to figure out what was going on. Then, all of a sudden, I heard a female voice say, "Who the hell are you?"

"That is both the simplest and most complex question you could have asked," responded the wizard, "but it was also the most expected. I am the being that they call The Ellimist."

"Shit," I heard a male voice say this time, "yu're real. Yu're really real!"

"Of course I am," the Ellimist responded calmly. "I take it that you've heard of me from some of the Animorph's stories."

"Yeah," that same male voice said, "But I didn't think that yu'er real. I t'ought that yu'er some kind of conspiracy ta hide what really went on in thugh Animorphs."

"Hardly," the Ellimist said sounding slightly amused. "If I was just a conspiracy then how did Tobias receive the ability to morph once again after becoming trapped? That is still beyond your technology is it not?"

[The Animorphs were and still are a conspiracy theorist's wet dream. There wasn't one single thing that they did which doesn't have a crazy story floating around to "explain" it. Everyone from communists to the Council of Thirteen (the Yeerk government) have played significant roles in making the war play out like it did according to some people. Although some of these theories are intriguing and may hold some kind of water the majority of them, like the Ellimist being a conspiracy, are just plain stupid. Still, some people seem to want to believe them...]

That male voice had nothing to say to that and a eerie silence crept over everyone. The next person to finally speak was another female's voice. "So, if you are the Ellimist, what do you want with us?"

"That was the next question I anticipated," the Ellimist replied. "Humans always want to know the who and what in a situation first." He took a short pause before continuing. "I have appeared before you because I need your help."

"What could _we_ possibly help _you _with?" A female voice said.

The Ellimist's face grew very serious as he said, "You may believe that the last of the Yeerks in their natural form have been removed from the planet, but you are mistaken. Not far from where you all live is a location entitled "The Birches". I assume that all of you are familiar with it. It was formed just after Visser One was captured and the Yeerks surrendered the planet Earth. This is no coincidence. "The Birches" was actually scheduled to become a test pool for the Yeerks in the very late stages of the war. And by the time the war ended construction was almost completed."

"It would've remained that way if not for a few determined Yeerks. Once all the major east coast Yeerk pools started to become inaccessible they began to learn of an almost finished pool in the Pocono Mountains that had been abandoned. Due to it's small size and "test" nature very few knew of it's existence, and most of those had died resisting capture. Still, the secret somehow escaped into the radical Yeerk resistance force and they quickly but secretly moved to adopt this pool as their base. All of the pieces were in place when the first began to arrive. They simply needed to give power to the Kandrona and warm to pool in order to receive their nourishment."

"Any Yeerk who knew about the pool but wasn't able to arrive in time took it's secret to their grave along with their host. Those who knew of it saw it as the last bastion of hope for the Yeerk race, and it was far more important than any one single Yeerk or controller. It was believed that if you couldn't serve the pool by becoming a member of the colony then it would be admirable to die defending it's secret. So if a Yeerk was about to starve and had no chance of making it to the pool in time they would often force their hosts to commit suicide. Since it was a quite common practice for Yeerks to do this across your planet they drew no suspicion for their actions. And the controllers who did make it to the pool in time rationalized their hasty but permanent movement to the area quite well. They said they wanted to escape the memories of being controllers by moving far away from their native cities. This seemed completely rational to other Humans and so no suspicion fell on them either. They managed to form a brand new functioning Yeerk colony right underneath the noses of Humans who were intently on guard for such activities."

"At first the colony simply tried not to draw any attention to itself. It was kept well hidden throughout the Yeerk hunts by it's member's discipline and a bit of luck. It seems that your "Kandrona detecters" are easily fooled by elements and minerals found in coal, which is present in vast quantities in your area. Those same elements and minerals hid the Alberta colony as well, but humans have a tendency to overlook crucial details like these at times. Anyway, the Yeerks managed to stay hidden even during the second Yeerk hunts after the Alberta incident. They lay somewhat dormant for about five years or so until public focus shifted far away from Yeerks and onto the Andalites."

[If you've heard of the Yeerks then you also know why focus shifted onto the Andalites. If you've never heard of the Yeerks then perhaps I should explain. Humans and Andalites formed a good relationship after the war. There was a large trade of technology back and forth among them. The humans got their scientific understanding advanced by a thousand years or so while the Andalites got junk food... and soccer. (Andalites love their soccer...) It'll take too long to explain why they wanted junk food so if you don't know then simply accept it.

Anyway, this went on for a few years and everyone was happy. The humans freely gave away their junk food secrets but the Andalites had a specific request regarding their technology. They wanted none of the technology they'd given us to be used for military purposes. We went along with them at first, but, being humans, we slowly found ways to bend and eventually break the rules. We slowly started to train our special forces on how to use the morphing technology the Andalites had given us. They weren't happy about it when they found out, but since we kept pumping junk food into their culture they tried shield their eyes for the time being. After a few years though we had run out of junk food to give them and they began to grow tired of the food they already had. And on top of that we decided to use some advanced Andalite technology in a little war of our own.

As you may or may not know Islamic terrorists hijacked a few passenger planes and crashed them into the White House, The Pentagon, The New York Stock Exchange, and the Staples Center during a hockey game on November 11th 2005 as a protest against western culture and it's values. The US quickly retaliated with it's full might and basically blew Saudi Arabia off the map, but in doing so they used quite a few Andalite technologies. This didn't sit well with the Andalites as you can imagine. The US apologized and "ended" all the programs in question but the damage was already done. Relations between the Humans and the Andalites quickly deteriorated until the Andalites finally demanded all their technology back and wanted all traces of it erased from the planet Earth.

We kind of laughed at that and thought it was some kind of a joke, but the Andalites threatened an invasion of Earth if we didn't do as they asked. So we slowly began giving them back this and that. We started with small things at first, but the Andalites weren't about to let us stall our way out of this one. They kept on getting angrier and angrier until finally they began their invasion of Earth. The Six Hour War as it's known today.

A small fleet of Andalite ships swooped in undetected and landed within all the major capitol cities on the planet Earth. They were quickly able to infiltrate the world's most powerful leader's homes (with the aid of their morphing technology and some serious reconnaissance work) and take them hostage, most of them in their sleep. In about an hour or two most of the Earth's most powerful people were up in space orbiting around the planet. And the Andalites pulled it off incredibly well. In only two places did they encounter any serious resistance and they quickly dealt with it almost easily. With those two incidents and a few other minor ones the final death toll came to 87 Humans and 4 Andalites dead.

Once they had our world leaders the war was basically over. Sure, we could've gotten some new leaders but that wasn't the point. The Andalites wanted to prove that they were the dominant of the two species and scare us into submission. Their plan worked beautifully. Within an hour or so of the first capture the negotiations began. And six hours after the whole thing began the Humans agreed to the Andalites terms and finally surrendered.

It wasn't easy giving up all the Andalite technology. They were quite serious about getting every last piece. Since Andalite technology was present in many consumer products people were forced to turn much of their personal property over to the Andalites. Add to that the loss of research and development of Andalite technologies and you had quite a few pissed off people. But if they'd left it at that then people could've dealt with it. It's what they did last that really infuriated people.

Along with all their tangible technology they also wanted to take back the morphing power. And not just the ability to give new people the power to morph either. They wanted to take away the morphing power from those who already had it. Ever since the Andalites had agreed to give Humans the power to morph they'd been devising a way to nullify it if the need came around. They were just putting the finishing touches on it when the war broke out and they were desperate to test it.

The governments of the world weren't too keen on letting their citizens become test subjects, but in the end there was little choice (although it's rumored that the war was very close to starting up again because of it). Reluctantly they handed over their registered morpher's lists and the hunts began. Many of the people with the ability to morph simply became _nothlits_ to avoid their capture (that's what it's called when you get trapped in a morph), but the people who wanted to remain human had to endure one hell of a shot.

The "antidote" as it was named did it's job more or less, but there were some nasty side effects. Many people who took the antidote developed some kind of growth from one of their morphs on their body. All of a sudden there were people walking around with part of a wing sticking out of their back or a dog's nose where their own nose used to be. And since these extra organs were intwined within the people's bodies very tightly it was often difficult to remove them. But if that's all that happened to someone they would be considered lucky.

There was an instant mortality rate of around 20% with the antidote for a host of different reasons. And if you survived the initial shot you were likely to have severe health problems as a result. The biggest problem was that blood seemed to seep out of a person's body anyway it could get out. It was fairly common to see people on the side of the road puking out blood while it also came out of their nose, ears, eyes, and anywhere else it could leave from. The antidote also messed up the person's internal organs so kidneys began to fail quickly, the liver wouldn't work right, the lungs would fill with blood, and even the heart would become erratic. It's estimated that around 50% of the people who got the antidote died quickly as a result. And the rest lived on with some serious health concerns.

The Andalites didn't seem to care however. The antidote did it's job in preventing people from morphing for the most part (I've heard some gruesome stories about people who tried...) It took the Andalites a few months to finish off their lists of antidote victims and to gather incredible quantities of computers and appliances. After that they basically said 'see ya' and they took off for good leaving Humans to fend for themselves.

Of course we quickly remade all the technology we understood, but that was only a small portion of it. And we tried to help the people suffering with the antidote sickness as well, but we couldn't do much except treat their symptoms. Needless to say we were a bit bitter at the Andalites for doing what they did. The word "Andalite" became as much of a nasty thing to call someone as the word "Yeerk" had been. And even until this day in the year 2034 relations are incredibly strained.]

"It was at that point that the Yeerk colony began to grow larger," the Ellimist continued. "Any Yeerk who didn't hold an important leadership position was asked to reproduce. Their numbers began to skyrocket and their need for more hosts grew tremendously. But it would be foolish to underestimate the intelligence of these Yeerks. They didn't simply accept any host, they searched for the most powerful hosts they could find and enticed them to relocate their homes to "The Birches". That is why doctors, lawyers, police officers, businessmen, and even politicians all live in "The Birches". They're made into controllers shortly after they arrive and they're all ready to do whatever it takes to defend their colony."

"They have been relatively cautious so far, but after thirty years of preparation they're finally beginning to put their plan into action. Their ultimate goal is to restore the Yeerk species to the power it once had. This may seem somewhat foolish, but you must never underestimate these Yeerks. I doubt you have heard anything as of yet, but these Yeerks are beginning talks with your government and major government contractors to either move their research plants to your area or start up new companies in the area. The Yeerks of course will not hesitate to penetrate these companies and use the latest technologies for their own purposes. Your government is currently developing and testing technologies that are far more advanced than you can imagine. While your country may not be able to win a war against the Andalites quite yet your rate of development is staggering. It's only a matter of time before you match Andalite technology and eventually surpass it. And if the Yeerks are in control of that technology then they will be unstoppable. You cannot allow that to happen."

"That's all well and good," a male voice said, "but what exactly are _we_ supposed to do about it? Do you want us to go tell our parents or something?"

"You must be very cautious about revealing what you now know. You will only have one major opportunity to do so before everyone will cease to listen. It is much the same scenario which takes place in the Human story "The Boy who Cried Wolf". You will need to have very conclusive evidence to support your claim or else no one will believe you. These Yeerks are masters at hiding and have been doing so for thirty years. A simple anonymous tip to the local law enforcement will not be enough."

"However, returning to your question I will not leave you with the information alone. It will be up to you to uncover the the colony's secrets and expose them to the world. That is why I will give you the ultimate power of deception. I will offer you the power to change into any animal you make contact with."

At that point everyone suddenly began talking at once. Everyone, including me, was excited about getting the power to morph. It's something we've heard a lot of cool things about. But, since we were all born well after the Andalites took back all their technology, we'd never even seen anyone do it in person. There are a few old videos floating around the internet that show people morphing, and any _nothlits_ that are still alive have done occasional interviews explaining what it's like to be an animal, but to try it for ourselves would just be awesome. Everyone wants to have the power to morph, and now we did.

"I will give you this power only if you agree to use it to infiltrate the Yeerk colony." Then he paused for a moment before continuing. "Do not take this decision lightly. If you choose to accept then you will be in constant danger. Not only from the Yeerks, but from your own species as well."

[To try and get back on the Andalite's good side various Human governments inform the Andalites whenever they find something that they missed. This was more common a few years after the Six Hour War, but even thirty years later things have a habit of popping back up. A few years ago some guy living in Russia was arrested and given to the Andalites because he had hidden his morphing power for twenty-five years. Does it really help our relations with the Andalites? Not really. But will that stop it from happening to us if anyone finds out, probably not. So to save ourselves from getting antidote sickness or even dying outright we needed to keep our power a secret from everyone.]

"You are all familiar with The Animorphs are you not?" The Ellimist continued. "The more observant of you might have noticed a few similarities between your situation and theirs. In fact, you all were carefully selected so that your strengths and weaknesses would counter-balance one another. You were chosen to become a sort of ideal group of Animorphs. But that does not mean that your task will be any less dangerous or difficult. You face a highly developed, ingenious, ruthless, and intrenched foe. Do not underestimate either the individual Yeerks or the colony at any time."

"Your main goal will be to gather evidence and preform some reconnaissance on the colony beneath "The Birches", but that does not mean that all will be peaceful. There will be times where you will have to fight. You must be prepared for such an incident at all times. You have the element of surprise on your side at this time so use it wisely. If you're ever discovered then your job will become much more difficult."

His expression turned a bit somber as he said, "I have done all I can for you at this point. The only other thing I can say to you all is 'good luck'."

And with a bright flash I was suddenly back in the hallway.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

I didn't have any time to prepare before I started to get run into by other people. I guess that's what happens when you suddenly stop (or suddenly reappear) in the middle of the hallway. But that was the least of my concern at that point. What I really wanted to do was scream.

It had just dawned on me what I had agreed to do. My life was now in serious danger. I hadn't woken up this morning ready to deal with something like this! Although our mission might not have seemed very scary at first (a lot of "slowly's" and "eventually's" were part of the reason) it was simply the way the Ellimist said it that made me feel like he knew something about the future... which he probably did. What was going to happen to us? I doubt that he'd be taking everything so seriously if we all turned out fine in the end.

We really were like the Animorphs: A group of unaware kids who were thrust into a war they hadn't known was going on right underneath their noses. Now I knew how they must have felt when they saw that ship land in front of them. But that realization didn't give me any solace. The original Animorphs fought a long, hard, and bloody war for three years which ended up ruining most of their lives. Although only one of them ended up dying due to the war quite a few of them were horribly scarred by what they'd been through. Was that our fate now? Was the same thing going to happen to us?

It took about five seconds for all that to run through my head before I finally began to think straight. I had just been put in a room with six other people I didn't really know and became an Animorph in every sense of the word. The first thing that I needed to do was figure out who those other people were. And luckily for me they were just as shocked as I was so they were easy to pick out. They were the only other people standing still in the middle of the hallway while everyone else was trying to push through and make it to their classes.

Now, I'm about as far from a leadership personality as they come. In fact, I'm usually the shy and quite one who takes orders really well and does what they're told. But, on the rare occasion that I'm forced to become a leader I simply suck it up and do it. This was one of those times. Everyone else was busy simply adjusting back to reality and we were slowly getting pushed apart by the current of the hallway. I hadn't gotten a real good look at everyone who was in the room with me so I didn't want to lose contact with them. If I did then I'm not sure we'd be able to find one another again since I didn't even know what some of them looked like. Now was my chance to get them all together in one group.

Working quickly I made my way over towards each one of them and asked them to follow me. They were too stunned to argue very much so they came along peacefully. Once I had all five of them following me (at the time I thought that was everyone) we made our way over to a small nook in the hallway where we packed closely together and began to talk.

"First off," I said as quietly as I could over all the other hallway noise, "that _was _real, right? Did you hear and see the same things I just did?"

Everyone slowly nodded their heads without giving any further clarification.

"Alright," I continued on unsure of how to feel at this point. "We don't have time to talk about it now, but we need to exchange phone numbers so we could at least talk about it later."

Not surprisingly most of the people in the group seemed a bit tentative about sharing their phone numbers with people who they only met a few minutes ago. But as I pulled my phone out and opened it up everyone slowly began to follow me. I was the first one to give out my name and number, but eventually we made it around the circle and everyone had everyone else's names and numbers.

[I guess this would be a good time to talk about cell phones in the future. In your day a cell phone would still be majorly considered... well, a phone. Their main use was to call people (or text them if you preferred). The more fancy phones in your time have started to include basic internet connectivity and some other nice features, but they're only a glimpse of what's to come.

In the 2030's a "cell phone" (why it's still called that I have no idea) is a person's life. There's nothing you can't do on one. Oh sure you can still call people with it, but they do SO much more. Everything from filing your taxes to remotely driving your car can be done on a phone. And if you get someone's phone number you get access into their phone and therefore everything about them. (There are privacy settings and whatnot that prevent unwanted people from getting into things, but with a few simple option changes that person can get access to everything) Phones are a highly personalizable thing and can contain a record of everything you have done either on the internet or in real life. A person's phone number is viewed as something that shouldn't be given out to just anyone.

Cell phones are a lot less like phones and a lot more like computers these days. In fact, the personal computer as you know it know doesn't exist in the 2030's. Everything is included in a compact package known as a cell phone. They can be as big as a really big pocket or the size and thickness of a credit card in size. Ever since we received Andalite technology we've been able to make things really small without making them all that much more expensive. Even after they took their technology back we still knew the basic principles behind it and quickly came up with our own designs. And after some refinement we got all the power we needed from some seriously small microchips. The microchips were so powerful that no one could feasibly design anything that would need more power (for personal use anyway). Programming something that would test the limits of a phone's hardware would require decades of programming work and no one was willing to put that much time into developing something for commercial use. Sure, there were some people who tried (take Duke Nukem 5 for example) but even then the game ran decently on even the cheapest phones.

And since there was no need to make big hulking computers anymore... no one did. But lets say that you wanted a full keyboard or a 100 inch screen or any of the other amenities that bigger computers offered over cell phones. Well, you could go out and get one. In the 2030's all phones have completely wireless interactive technologies. You simply need to go out and buy a monitor, place your phone next to it, and the visual signal is instantly transferred to the monitor instead of your phone's display. Most families have at least one "computer" center which has a monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, printer, and anything else they want to hook up. Almost everything works flawlessly with any phone due to their easy to use operating systems.

All phones sold in the 2030's ship with a company specific version of Mac OS. And if you're technologically inept you might leave it at that, but most people install some form of Linux on their phones instead. It's perfectly normal and almost suggested by some phone manufacturers. The operating system called "Windows" that was so popular in your time became obsolete even before I was born. I can't imagine why anyone in their right minds would use that mess of an operating system to begin with though...

Anyway, there you go. A brief description of cell phones in the 2030's.]

We finished exchanging numbers only a few seconds before the bell rang for third period to start. Once we heard the bell we suddenly broke out of our little formation and scattered.

My math teacher was a bit annoyed that I was late to class, but if he knew what had just happened to me he might have been a little more compassionate. I tried to pay attention to what he was teaching that day, but I just couldn't. That went for the rest of my classes that day as well. I was busy thinking about what I wanted to say to everyone else when we had our first "meeting". I knew that whatever happened at this meeting could ultimately decide what happened to all of us for the rest of our lives. It wasn't going to be easy to agree on what to do next so I thought about it as hard as I could. And by the time school was over I had a good idea of what I thought we needed to do. The only problem would be convincing everyone else to think the same way.

As soon as I made it onto my bus I pulled out my cell phone and quickly opened up Open Chat. (Open Chat is a program that resembles a chat room, but unlike chat rooms in your time it has a lot of fancy features). I waisted no time hosting a chat session and inviting all the others. I knew a few of them vaguely since some of them had been in my classes, but the others I hadn't even seen before.

Let's see, a quick summary of everyone would probably be good about now. There's Alex Chung who's this little Chinese girl. She was in my math class last year so I kind of knew her. She's really smart and her family owns the major Chinese restaurant in the area. Then there's Tim and Tom Davis who happen to be identical twins. Tom is currently in my history class so I kind of know him, but I never met Tim. I do know that Tom is really into video games (more than the average person is into video games anyway) since he has a gigantic phone. Then there's Billy Burger who's basically one of the school's hardcore hicks. His family owns a farm and they've lived here for a hundred years or more. Just think of your stereotypical hick and you've got Billy. And then there's Angie Wakeman. I never met her and don't know much about her, but she seems nice. Including myself there were six of us at that point (you'll meet Lindsey soon enough).

Within a few short moments everyone accepted my Open Chat invitation and we were all in a room together. The following is a "translated" (by that I mean translated to "proper" English from 1337 speak (pronounced "leet" speak) so that everyone can understand it) summary of what was said.

"First of all," I began once everyone had joined, "since we've all had some time to think about it now I want to make sure again that everything really happened. You all heard exactly what I heard about the Yeerks, right?"

Slowly everyone responded with some form of 'yes'.

"Alright," I continued, "so, what are your thoughts about it?"

Tim and Tom responded at almost the same time by saying, "I can't wait to try out the morphing power!"

"Yeah," replied Billy, "it's going to be awesome!"

Everyone else followed in quick succession with the same basic idea... including me. I'd been thinking so hard about what to do against the Yeerks that I basically forgot we had the power to morph. But after a short discussion about which morphs would be the coolest to try out I tried to bring the conversation back on topic.

"That's all well and good," I said after everyone got their say in which morph would be the coolest, "but that's not the biggest issue right now. What I meant to ask was how should we deal with the Yeerks."

There was a long pause in the conversation, but eventually Angie said, "I think we should tell the police or the FBI or something. It's too much for us to handle by ourselves. I know that the original Animorphs took on an entire Yeerk invasion by themselves and won, but look at what eventually happened to them. Only one is still alive now."

"Yeah," said Tom. "I really don't want to have to fight anyone either," finished Tim. "I mean, we're just supposed to be doing some reconnaissance or whatever, but you saw how serious the Ellimist looked." "He knows something," Tom continued. "He can see the future. He knows that this isn't going to turn out well."

"But what will be worse," I added in, "if we go to the FBI now and they don't believe us or if we try to get some more evidence against the Yeerks. We don't really have a whole lot of evidence right now."

"We could show them that we have the power to morph," said Alex. "That'll get their attention."

"NO!" a few people shouted out. "We can't tell anyone we have the power to morph," Tim said. "Ever," added Tom. "If we did then they'd turn us over to the Andalites for sure."

"If we tip them off that there's a hidden colony of Yeerks then they might let us go," responded Billy. "We didn't really ask to get the power to morph and we didn't do anything illegal to get it."

"If they turned in some quiet old Russian guy that was minding his own business what do you think they'd do to a few kids?" Angie argued.

"But that Russian guy didn't expose a hidden Yeerk pool, did he?" Billy countered.

"Wait a second guys," I said to interrupt the argument. "There's no need to be hasty. We can go to the FBI at any time, but we only have one shot to get it right. There's no doubt that morphing in front of them will get them to take us seriously, but why should we take that risk? If we can get some good information on the colony first then we won't even have to tell the FBI we can morph."

"But how are we even going to do that?" Alex said. "We don't know anything other than there's a Yeerk pool below The Birches. How exactly are we supposed to get some information on it?"

No one said anything for a while, but I eventually came back with, "I'm not sure. We'll have to do some surveying around The Birches to see if we can find anything out. Then we can go from there. But I think that we should at least try to do this first before we go around telling other people things. The Yeerk colony has been there for over thirty years. If we wait a few extra weeks to tell someone it won't make that big a difference."

I took a pause before saying, "So, who's going to come with me to do some surveillance?"

There was a long but expected pause before Billy was the first one to say, "I'll come along. I don't want any Yeerks or big corporations ruining my county. If I can stop them I will. I don't know The Birches all that well, but I definitely know my way around just about everywhere else."

"I guess that some surveillance couldn't hurt anything," said Alex. "I just hope you can think of something better than just looking at trees all day."

"We're in," said Tim and Tom in rapid succession.

"I guess I might as well go too," chimed Angie.

"It's settled then," I said afterwards. "We'll set up a time and date later. But first we need to think about something a little more... enjoyable maybe? We need to talk about morphs. Since none of us has morphed before we should all start with something easy. And it also needs to be something that can run around in the woods unnoticed. Um... does everyone have a dog and/or cat? That would probably be a good place to start."

"I've got a dog," said Billy.

"I don't have any pets," said Alex.

"We have a cat," Tim and Tom echoed.

"I've got both," Angie added.

"For those of you that have pets," I began, "you should go home tonight and test out your morphing power. But you've got to make sure to do it in secret. The last thing we need right now is for one of your parents to find out that you can morph. Alex will need to stop by someone's house to pick up a morph. As soon as possible would be best. But everyone should stop by my house soon since I have a bunch of animals you can acquire. Since my mom's a vet we tend to amass quite a few animals."

"Well," Alex said, "At least now I know where we'll be getting all our morphs from."

"My mom's just a regular vet," I clarified. "Like, a cats and dogs kind of vet. I'm not like Cassie's parents. Don't expect any wolves or tigers or anything. We're going to have to do some work to get something like that. But there is one thing I think we all should get. Since I doubt we'll be getting any raptor-like bird morphs anytime soon we could all acquire my parakeet... unless anyone else has any birds as pets." After a round of no's I continued. "It's brightly colored so I don't think it'll be incredibly stealthy, but you all know how much the original Animorphs relied on bird morphs to get around."

"So," I began after a pause, "does anyone else have any ideas for some good morphs?"

There was a slight pause before Tim finally said, "I got a great idea!" "How about a deer morph?" finished Tom.

"That's not a bad idea," I replied, "but how are we going to get one of those?"

"Our aunt has one of those feeders in her backyard," said Tom. "The deer come right up and eat seeds out of your hand if you let them," added Tim. "We've done it a few times," Tom continued.

"I hate those things," Billy said suddenly. "They lure all the deer away from the game lands and into people's backyards where I can't shoot them. There's nothing more frustrating than sitting in a tree all day without seeing a single deer and then almost hitting a few with our truck on the way home."

"Well, they're really going to help us here," added Alex.

"Okay," I said to stop the argument before it started, "that sounds good. So how about we do something like this. After school one day all of you can ride the bus home with me. We'll acquire my parakeet and any other animals we need to. Then we could fly over to Tim and Tom's aunt's house and acquire some deer before going to see what we can find in The Birches. Sound good to everyone?"

After a bunch of yeses I continued with, "We'll figure out a date later. I'm about to get home and I've got some stuff to do today. Does anyone else have anything to add?"

I had almost finished typing in 'well then see you guys later' when Alex suddenly said, "I'm not one hundred percent sure, but I think I saw another person at our... first meeting. I think Lindsey Hamilton was there, although if I'm the only one who saw her then I might have been imagining things."

"I think I saw her there too," added Angie.

"I thought there was someone we'd missed," said Tim. "I thought there were seven people there," added Tom.

"Lindsey?" I asked quickly, "_THE_ Lindsey? Are you sure she was there?"

"I'm pretty sure she was," confirmed Alex.

(Lindsey was sort of like the most popular girl in school type person. Everyone knew her... and she also had quite a reputation for being very bitchy and stuck up to anyone she didn't like or know.)

"I don't assume that anyone has her number on hand, do they?" I said desperately. The silence was deafening.

"Alright then," I said with a sigh in real life, "someone's going to have to go ask her about it. Anyone know her?" Again the silence was deafening.

"Alright then," I said forebodingly, "I guess I'll have to do it. Anyone else have any bad news?" This time the silence was wonderful. "Okay then, I'll talk to you all soon." And with that I logged out of Open Chat.

The next day at school I kept an eye out for Lindsey. It wasn't hard to do. She was always being followed by her entourage. I spotted her early on, but it took me until lunch to get the courage to talk to her.

She was sitting at the end of a table surrounded by most of the other "popular" kids at school. Since she was at the end I had a clear shot at her. I knew I had to take it. After eating my own lunch fairly quickly I made my way over to her table. I walked up to the end she was sitting at and quickly said, "Excuse me, Lindsey..."

She took one look at me and said, "Who the hell are you?"

I kind of ignored her and said, "I need to talk to you about what happened in the hallway yesterday."

It took her a second to realize what I meant, but once she did I could see it in her eyes. She slowly turned to her friends and said, "Don't worry about this guy, I'll deal with him," before she got up and began walking towards a quiet corner of the lunch room. I took that as a sign to follow her.

Once we both reached the corner she quickly turned to me and said, "I don't care who you are or what you're trying to do but I want nothing to do with what happened yesterday. As far as I'm concerned it never happened and I never want to hear anything about it again. NEVER AGAIN, do you understand? Also, I don't want to hear anything about you or anyone else who was there ever again either. I don't want any of you ever to speak to me again either regardless of what you want to say. Is that clear?"

With a little bit of shock in my voice I weakly said, "okay."

"Good," she replied. "Now get out of here and leave me alone." Then she causally walked back to her table and sat down. I actually wasn't too disappointed with her decision. At least I'd never have to talk to her again. It was only going to be a group of six for the time being and that seemed like more than enough.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

My name is Alexandra Chung, but everyone calls me Alex. I'm 14, about 5'3'', and have brown eyes along with shoulder length black hair. I guess you could call me the 'nerd' of the group, but I don't really see it. I know I get good grades in school and I don't really have much of a social life, but neither of those are my fault. Since I'm Chinese I'm just naturally gifted at school. (I know, I know... I hate to resort to stereotypes but, well, it's true. A bit of studying doesn't hurt either though.) I also don't have much of a social life because my parents own their own Chinese restaurant which I have to help with six days a week.

Since my parents don't speak English all that well (they both came over from China in their 20's) one of my three brothers or I have to be there to answer the phones and take the orders. Each one of us gets one day off Monday through Thursday (my day is usually Tuesday) and then we all work Friday through Sunday during the busiest times. Most people I talk to think that my life sucks but hey, it's just normal to me. I've been helping my parents with the restaurant ever since they trusted me enough to hold hot things. We make a decent living out of it so I'm not one to complain. The only problem is that my family hadn't planned on me suddenly becoming an Animorph...

Getting our first "real" meeting together was a bit tough. I was only available on Tuesdays but Angie had basketball practice on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Adam's mom has Fridays off so we couldn't come over then either. We had to wait a week and a half to find a Wednesday that everyone was free on. (I asked one of my brothers to switch his off day with me because I had to do a "school project" with a few other people that Wednesday) By that time everyone had at least attempted to morph into something and most of them were pretty good at it. (Angie wasn't all too thrilled about the whole morphing thing because it looked and felt gross, but she still did it a few times) I was the only one who hadn't acquired anything.

I'd been close to acquiring a few bugs and things I saw flying around, but I thought better of it. I wasn't sure if I could handle being a bug for my first morph. All of the Animorphs had said that morphing bugs was one of the worst morphs they ever had to do. I decided to wait until I got to Adam's house so I could start with something more similar to my own body and was easy to control.

Eventually that Wednesday finally came. We all tried to board Adam's bus just like we planned, but after a few of us had gotten on the bus driver decided to put a stop to that. She said that we weren't allowed to ride other people's buses and we all had to get off. Thinking quickly Adam let everyone else go but pleaded to the bus driver to let me stay on. After some made up excuses the bus driver finally gave up and let me stay. I wasn't quite sure what Adam had in mind, but after he finished texting his instructions to everyone else he leaned over and whispered, "Since everyone else has some kind of morph they're going to use them to reach my house instead of riding the bus. It's not all that far from here so it shouldn't be too bad. Tim and Tom have been there already so they know the way." Then he took a small pause and said, "This will be our first "mission" to see if everyone can handle their morphs and stay out of sight. It's not exactly empty woodland between the school and my house so it's a good stealth test." I simply nodded and slouched back in the chair feeling a bit disappointed that I wasn't going on the first "mission".

The bus ride went without incident. Before I knew it we were walking up to Adam's house. We went inside and were quickly greeted by his two dogs. They went into defense mode once they heard someone outside, but as soon as they realized it was Adam they quickly calmed down. And since I was with him they didn't give me more than a passing sniff or two before plopping back down on their respective beds.

"Here's your first decision," Adam said soon after the dogs got back into their beds. "You can either acquire the big one or the little one. But since Tim, Tom, and I have already acquired the big one it would probably be best if you got the small one so we don't all have the same morph. We might need to use the little one's size to our advantage at some point. But if you really want to I guess you can acquire the big one."

I looked over the dogs quickly before saying anything. The big one was a pretty standard Doberman: big, strong, ferocious... you know, all of that. The little one looked like he was a mix of some kind (I'm not hugely knowledgeable when it comes to dogs). He was about a quarter of the size of the Doberman. He was the loudest when we approached the door, but he honestly didn't look all that threatening. He did have some incredibly big ears though which would certainly give him the hearing advantage. If I was completely free to chose which one I wanted I would've chosen the Doberman, but since a few people had already picked him as their morph...

"I'll take the little one," I said slightly disappointed as I slowly made my way over towards him. "Does he have a name other than 'the little one'?"

"Yeah, he does," Adam responded, "it's just that I call all of my pets by simple names. I also have a black cat which I call 'black kitty' and so on. The little doggy's name is Demon."

'Well', I thought to myself and I bent down to pet him on the head, 'at least he has a ferocious name...'

As I sat there with my hand on his head I tried to do what the Animorphs said that they did. I tried to imagine his DNA flowing into me. I tried to imagine him becoming a part of me. I tried to imagine what it would be like to see through his eyes and hear through his ears. I wanted to become him and I focused intently on that thought. All of a sudden his tail wagging began to get slower until it almost stopped wagging entirely. That was when I knew it was working. I didn't really feel anything incredibly different, but after a few moments I was compelled to take my hand off of his head. And after a few more moments his tail began to speed up again as a sign that he was alright. I continued to pet him for a little bit longer as if saying 'thanks for giving me your body' before I finally stood up again.

"It looked as if you acquired him just fine," Adam said as I stood up once again, "but I wouldn't test it out quite yet. We're going to be doing a lot of morphing today so you should save your energy." I was a bit disappointed once again, but I knew that I'd get to morph soon enough once everyone else arrived.

We waited for a few minutes with no sign of anyone else showing up. "Well," Adam said after a long awkward silence between us, "I guess you can try and find one of my cats if you want. One of them is bound to be sleeping on someone's bed. Just go down the hallway and peak in any open doors. No one else is home so don't worry about walking in on someone."

I decided to take him up on his offer and made my way down the hallway. It felt weird just being in someone else's house (I told you that I don't get out much), but sneaking through it just felt kind of wrong. I knew I had permission to be sneaking through it, but still... Everything seemed so different to me. I wasn't used to the layout of his house or where the doors were or anything like that. The only thing I could do was creep along slowly ready to attack if anything jumped out at me.

Of course nothing decided to jump out at me and I eventually reached the first ajar door. I pushed in the door very gently and slowly took a peak inside. It was a small room with a twin sized bed and a few dressers around the perimeter. It was probably Adam's parent's room since I doubt anyone else would need a twin sized bed to sleep in. And laying almost in the middle of the bed was a curled up ball of fur.

I slowly crept my way over towards the bed and took a good look at the cat sleeping there. He was black and gray with a tiger stripped pattern embedded in his fur. I kind of liked the tiger pattern so I decided to acquire him. I extended my hand very slowly and eventually made contact with the sleeping cat's side. But as soon as I touched him he twitched a bit and I quickly removed my hand. As he began to stretch out his front paws he let out a yawn before he sleepily opened his eyes to see what was bothering him. He gave me a quick glance and, realizing that I was no threat to him, curled back up and went back to sleep. Reassured that he wasn't going to scratch or bite me or anything I place my hand back onto his body. He didn't really seem to mind this time so I focused in on acquiring him. It was a bit hard to tell if I was acquiring him or not since he was trying to sleep, but the moment I felt compelled to take my hand off of him I knew that I'd been successful. After that I quietly backed out of the room and let him sleep.

I walked back into the living room only to see that Adam was missing. But after a quick search I found him in the kitchen staring out the window into his back yard. He must have heard me coming because as soon as I entered he said, "I wonder what's taking them so long. They should've been here by now. I hope that everything's going alright..." I had nothing to say in return, but I joined him in looking out of the window.

A few minutes went by with us staring in silence before Adam suddenly perked up. "Tim? Tom? Is that you?" he said excitedly. (I can only guess that one of them had spoken to him in private thought-speak). A few moments later Adam replied with, "Okay, gotcha," before almost running out the back door. I watched from the window as he ran towards the gate to his back yard and opened it. Then, all of a sudden, a doberman carrying a back pack in it's mouth came running out of the woods surrounding Adam's back yard and went through the gate. Adam left the gate open and followed the doberman right up to the back door. As soon as Adam opened the door both of them scrambled inside quickly.

_Hey Alex_, I heard Tim or Tom say as the dog walked by me. But the weird part was that my ears didn't hear anything. The "sound" simply reverberated in my head and I could clearly see who I thought was saying it in my head as well.

"Hey," I said back a little meekly. This thought-speak stuff was going to be weird for a while... But thought-speak was nowhere near as weird as what I saw next. The doberman that had just walked in through the door quickly dropped the bookbag he was carrying on the floor and began to... well, morph.

Even though I hadn't acquired a morph until a few minutes ago I had been busy researching everything about them when I had some free time. And the most disturbing part of morphing is... well, the morphing. There is the occasional video floating around on the internet showing someone morphing, but those are no comparison to the real thing. I watched as the doberman's muzzle quickly shrived up and squished back into it's face. I watched as the thick hair began to get sucked back into the skin. But the thing that really grossed me out was when his pelvis began to creak and snap as it twisted around. That's when I stopped watching.

I know I'm a girl and I'm supposed to be grossed out easily, but growing up with 3 brothers has given me a lot of "boyish" characteristics. I'm usually pretty hard to gross out. I was able to watch the online morphing videos without so much as a flinch. But nothing can prepare you for the real thing. All I can say is that I hope I eventually grow a tolerance for it. But until then I was just going to have to look away. All I remember thinking about shortly afterwards was that hopefully it wouldn't be as bad as it looks when it happens to me.

Not long after I looked away from Tim or Tom morphing I watched Adam open the back door to let in a golden retriever carrying a bookbag in it's mouth. It quickly sped out of view though as it ran down the hallway and into an open room. Next through the door came an old looking bloodhound also carrying a backpack in it's mouth. _That wooda bein fun if I coulda breathed_, I heard Billy say as he placed the backpack down and began to morph. I turned my attention to what was going on outside as another doberman with a backpack in it's mouth made the short trip from the woods to Adam's back door. And once was inside he also dropped his backpack and began to morph.

Adam hurried outside to close the gate, and once he made it back inside he said, "Did everything go alright?"

"Yeah," Tim or Tom said, "everything went fine."

_We just had to go around a few people who were in our way_, continued the other one.

_And dogs wit bookbags ain't exactly tha most stealthy... _Billy tried to say before he was cut off. Most likely due to the thought-speak morphing boundary line being reached.

[Thought-speak is the way people communicate while in morphs. It's also the way that Andalites communicate, which is why I guess they built it into their morphing technology. It's more than just hearing the words in your head, it's almost like the other person's thoughts are transferred to you. You routinely see pictures and things while you can also hear some words sometimes. Anyway, you can only use it while you're in a morph. If you're trying to talk while demorphing then at some point it's going to stop working.]

"We also had to go slowly so we could breathe," Tim or Tom added.

_Yeah_, continued the other, _it's hard to run and not get enough air due to something being in your mouth._

"You should've hidden your bookbags somewhere by the school," Adam replied. "That way you wouldn't have had to carry them."

"We're not leaving our phones stashed away behind some trees..." Tim or Tom said.

"Just to wait for them to be stolen," continued the other.

"Besides," Billy added, "where wud we put all-er clothes?"

Just as we all turned to look at Billy Angie decided to suddenly appear. She was the one to react first.

"Oh... my god," she said as she quickly turned away.

"That's something I really didn't need to see," Adam added. We all nodded in agreement. All the guys had on some combination of a tight shirt and some kind of pants to use as their morphing suit...

[Since clothing isn't incorporated in the DNA of a person it's kind of hard to not be naked after morphing. To avoid that problem it's possible to wear very tight fitting clothing, a morphing suit if you will.]

Billy on the other hand was only wearing his underpants. And they were a gigantic pair of tighty-whites. Billy isn't exactly the slimmest guy on the planet so you can imagine how pleasant that was to look at. And he also isn't exactly the most bare-skinned person either. I don't think I'll ever get the image of a fat hairy guy standing around in his tighty whities in Adam's kitchen out of my mind.

"Whats the matter?" Billy said as if he'd expected our reaction, "I think I gots a reel good body." I only looked for a second, but I KNOW I'll never get the image of a hairy fat guy _dancing _around Adam's kitchen in his tighty whites. So much jiggling...

"That's quite enough Billy," Adam said after some time, "we've seen more than enough."

"Ya sure?" Billy said back tauntingly, "cause I still gots plenty moar."

"Yeah, we're sure," Angie added in quickly.

"Besides, we've got things we need to do," Adam finally said. "You need a cat morph and then we've all got to acquire my parakeet."

After Billy stopped... dancing and acquired the same cat I had it was time for everyone to acquire Adam's parakeet. He led everyone over to the cage and slowly began to open it.

"That's not a parakeet," Angie said shortly after getting a good look at the bird, "that's a love bird. My grandma used to have one almost exactly like that."

"It doesn't really matter what it's technically called," Adam said as he slowly began to reach his hand into the cage, "it's a small, brightly colored bird. That's enough for me."

He stuck out his finger to entice the bird to climb onto it, but the bird was having none of it. She opened her beak and flared her wings partially as a warning, but when the finger didn't stop coming she did the only other thing she could do. She bit it.

"Ow!" Adam screamed as he quickly pulled his finger back, "what the hell was that for?"

"Hey," Angie said, "I'd bite a menacing finger that was a quarter of my size if it was suddenly thrust at me too."

Adam, with a bit of resentment, countered with, "Alright, then you do it."

Angie calmly took Adam's place in front of the cage and slowly began moving her own hand in. Unlike Adam however she kept her finger low and very non-menacing. As her finger got close to the bird it began to get defensive again, but Angie simply stopped moving her hand and waited until the bird was comfortable. The bird, now more curious than afraid of the finger, came over to it and gave it what looked like a small test bite. Angie didn't even flinch, but it probably didn't hurt all that much anyway. When the bird was satisfied with... well, whatever it was satisfied with it quickly jumped onto Angie's finger and she slowly carried it out of the cage.

"There," Angie said when her hand was completely out, "that wasn't so hard."

Adam, probably feeling a bit emasculated at this point, simply said, "Just hurry up and acquire it."

"I just finished," Angie said back after a second or two, "who's next?"

Slowly but surely we passed the bird around our little ring of people. After Angie was done acquiring it we had to lay it down in our hands and pass it around since it wasn't cognizant enough to re-perch anymore. Adam was the last one to acquire it and afterwards he gently placed it back in the cage. Within a few seconds it was up and running again as if nothing had happened.

"Alright," Adam said after he closed the cage, "ready to try out our new morph?"

Everyone slowly nodded in agreement. I was a bit nervous since it was my first time, but I wasn't going to back out of it now.

"Well," Adam began again, "after you put all of your backpacks in my room you can."

After the mass exodus to Adam's room (when I stashed my own bookbag and outer clothing) everyone was ready to finally morph. Adam came and stood next to me before saying to everyone, "Here's what we'll do. I'm going to prop open the screen door with something and then once you're done morphing you can make your way outside. Find a perch on the gutter or something and wait for everyone else to join you. I'll be the last one out and I'll try to pull out the thing holding the door open so at least it'll close. My brother will be home in about half an hour so I don't think anything will get stolen. Sound good?"

With another nodding of everyone's head Adam added, "Alright, get to it!" before turning to face me.

"Just focus on becoming the bird," he said quietly. "Think about what it would be like to have it's wings and be able to fly around. Think of how much fun that'll be. Think about how much you really want to be the bird. Focus hard on it and you should start to feel the changes begin. It'll feel weird at first, but just keep going. You'll be done in no time."

I didn't bother telling him that, although I hadn't done it personally, I've done enough research to know how to morph. I just closed my eyes and focused on that tiny green bird with it's bright red face. I focused in on it's wings, on it's beak, and on it's talons. I wanted to become that bird. I wanted to feel what it was like to morph for the first time. Slowly but surely I felt the changes began.

My feathers were the first thing to appear. It felt like they were slowly rising up out of my skin and that gave me kind of an itchy feeling. I tried to scratch my arm, but right when I touched it I instantly pulled my hand back. My skin felt as if it was peeling off in sheets (or feathers) and that just felt like something I shouldn't really touch. Besides, I had other things to worry about anyway.

I quickly started shrinking once my feathers began to peel away from my skin. It almost felt as if I was falling towards the ground... but unusually slowly. By the time I was about half my normal height I felt my nose began to grow outwards. I felt it extend out in front of my face like someone was pulling it in a cartoon. My mouth moved upwards and melted into my nose before everything slowly began to turn hard and solid. Quickly after that I felt my arms bend and twist in strange ways before folding in nicely alongside the rest of my body. And then, all of a sudden, I could feel the changes stop. I slowly opened my eyes and... 'WOW' was the first thing I said. My vision was incredible. The colors were slightly different from what I was used to but I was able to zoom into anything and everything in the room and see it like it was right in front of me. It was like looking through a telescope when you needed it and your normal eyes when you wanted to see something close. And then I saw something that confused me. I saw another bird that looked exactly like me.

I let out a chirp to see how the other bird would respond, but she echoed with almost the exact same chirp. Then a third identical bird let out a third identical chirp and both of us turned to look at her. From then on it was a chirp fest as everyone tried to figure out what was going on. I know that I was completely confused and I could tell by the other bird's reactions that they felt the same way. I'm not sure how long that went on, but the next thing I clearly remember is hearing Adam's "voice" in my head.

_Come on, get it together, _he said sounding somewhat frustrated,_ we've got a lot to do and not much time to do it. We can't waste it chirping at each other._

One by one each of us stopped chirping until there was only one left (the real bird was just as confused as we were over the whole identical chirping thing and had joined in at some point. Unlike us she had no real reason to stop.)

_Sorry about that,_ I said after everyone got quiet. (Thought-speak worked just like they said it did on the internet. Pretty easy really.) _I just lost control for a second and my bird mind was confused._

[Whenever you enter into a morph you always have the animal's natural instincts to contend with. People ended up calling this the "animal's mind". Depending on how intense your morph's instincts are they can be very difficult to control. Sometimes they can get the better of you.]

_It's all right, _Adam replied before quickly changing the subject. _ So, everyone has to make their way out the door. I used a rolled up magazine to hold it open so there should be enough room to squeeze through. Once everyone's out I'll pull out the magazine and join you on the gutter. _

One by one we all squeezed out the door and made it outside. I was one of the last ones to go. Everyone else before me didn't seem to have much of a problem with getting up to the gutter, but the moment I stepped outside I knew I was in trouble. I spread my wings open and began to flap them, but all I did was push some air around. No lift.

I knew that everyone saw me struggling and that they were probably laughing at me on the inside, but I didn't find it that funny at the time.

_Just let your bird instincts take control, _Angie said calmly. _It knows how to fly so let it._

I took a deep breath and let the bird in me take over completely. Bad idea. As soon as I gave up control I was flying, but I was flying in the wrong direction. The bird didn't want to go onto the gutter really. It wanted to go find some food in the nearby trees. I thought that taking control back would solve the problem, but then I remembered that I didn't really know how to fly yet. So, I began to drop. I managed to cushion my landing by flapping like a maniac before I hit, but I was back on the ground where I didn't want to be.

_What are you doing?_ And _What happened?_ Tim and Tom shouted out at almost the same time.

_Are you okay? _asked Angie in a slightly softer tone.

_Yeah, I'm fine, _I replied, _I just got to get the hang of it._

This time I only gave the bird the power to get airborne while I got to choose the direction that it flew. It's a bit hard to explain, but the point is that I finally made it up to the gutter just as Adam was starting to pull out the magazine. He gripped onto the end of it with his beak and began to try and pull it out of the door. He struggled with it for a few tugs before he finally said, _Um, can someone give me a bit of help here. This is harder than I thought it would be._

_Sure, I'll help ya,_ Billy said as he expertly swooped on down and landed right next to him. They both tried pulling but it seemed that even both of them couldn't get it to move. It took Tim and Tom to swoop down and help before the magazine finally slid out of the door and it closed.

_Phew_, Adam said, _that was a lot of work. _He took a few breaths and said, _Alright, ready to go? Everyone got their flying down?_

I quietly responded with, _I'm ready, _while everyone else seemed at least somewhat enthusiastic about mission. _Well then,_ Adam said as he took off, _here we go. _It took him a second to get some altitude, but once he did we all jumped off the gutter and began to follow him.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Flying is both easy and hard at the same time. Once you get the hang of limiting the animal instincts of a morph everything becomes easy. None of us had ever been birds before, but after flying for no more than a few minutes we were already pros at it. (Well... to be honest it took me a little longer than that, but it wasn't _that _much longer...). For the first ten minutes of flying or so we were one disorderly flock because everyone was trying to do something different. Some of us were gaining altitude and then diving. Some of us were doing quick turns and zig-zags. And some of us (like Angie and I) were simply trying to fly along. I was still working on just flying properly, but Angie... well, to put it nicely, she was terrified.

I couldn't really blame her though. I mean, I was a bit scared myself. Not only are you this tiny, insignificant, defenseless little bird but you're fifty to one hundred feet up off the ground with nothing holding you up except the air beneath you. That's not a situation that the human mind was designed for. For almost the first ten minutes I had to keep saying, 'I'm not going to fall' over and over to myself just to keep from panicking. But I guess that didn't work for Angie. She insisted on flying as low as she could. And when I say low I mean about five feet off the ground. She never went higher than the treetops or the roofs of houses the entire time.

After the first ten minutes were up everyone finally began to settle in. After some early confusion both Tim and Tom finally got their bearings and began to lead us over to their aunt's house. A few minutes after that we all began to understand the hard part of flying. It was a tiring thing to do! I guess it becomes more obvious when you really think about it, but it's a lot of work to keep something heavier than air suspended in it.

When Tim and Tom told us that we still had a ways to go we all began to groan and complain. We all wanted to stop and take a break but Adam insisted that we go on. Instead of stopping to rest he suggested that we fly in a better formation to reduce wind resistance. Up until this point we had been flying as a scattered group with everyone having different altitudes and horizontal spacing between them. Adam decided that it would be more natural to see a small flock of birds rather than a scattered grouping, so we slowly arranged ourselves into the V-shaped formation that geese use to fly. Angie wasn't particularly happy about it at first since she had to fly quite a bit higher than she was comfortable with, but the formation really did cut down the effort it took to fly. It was a little bit difficult to stay level due to the turbulence and the fact that our wings beat much faster than a goose's, but we made it work. So for the next forty-five minutes or so we flew like geese with everyone swapping the lead spot at least once.

Just when we were all starting to get really tired Tim or Tom finally said, _There it is. It's the blue one._

_Finally_, Angie cried out as she began to glide down to it. Everyone else followed closely behind.

_Wait,_ Adam said suddenly, _is your aunt home?_

_I don't think so,_ one of the twins said.

_Well, let's play this safe anyway, _Adam responded. We've got to morph somewhere that no one will see us.

_Behind the shed,_ said both Tim and Tom at the same time. _The back faces the woods so no one will see us._

_Yeah,_ Adam replied, _but what about the sides?_

There was a moment of silence before one of the twins said, _I don't think anyone will see us. The shed is almost in the woods anyway. The only people that might see us would have to already be in the woods and I don't see anyone there._

Adam thought about this for a bit before saying, _Alright, just be careful. _After he gave the okay we quickly landed (most of us did anyway. I kind of... tripped) and began to demorph. It's kind of like morphing but in reverse I guess. I just had to picture myself in my head and told myself I wanted to become myself again. And after flying for close to an hour I had enough of the bird morph for one day. I was ready to be human once again.

I kept my eyes closed the entire time so I wouldn't have to see everyone else demorph in close proximity. Even though I didn't see anything I heard more than enough to compensate. There's nothing quite like hearing someone's arm bones twist and snap back into place... But eventually we all finished morphing and it was quiet. There we were in some old lady's back yard wearing nothing but underpants and bikinis while hiding behind the shed. Who ever said that being an Animorph was glamorous?

"So," Billy asked once we were all human again, "where's this feedah? I havn't seen it nowhere."

"It's back in the woods a bit." one of the twins answered. "Our aunt usually fills it when she comes home from work," the other added. "I'm not sure what time it is, but I don't think she's home yet. The deer are probably waiting for their food though. They usually are."

"Why would you put a feeder in the woods?" Angie asked suddenly. "How are you supposed to see the deer then?"

"It's not about deer watching," one of them said, "it's about giving them food so they don't eat her anything in her garden."

"So let's go then," Adam said impatiently. "We still have to get over to The Birches after we acquire the deer and at least take a look at the place. We don't have a lot of time to waste. So lead the way guys."

"Into the forest?" Angie asked slowly, "without shoes? Are you crazy?"

"We don't have much of a choice," Adam said as he began to follow Tim and Tom. "It won't be that bad," he added at the end.

"That makes me feel _so_ much better," Angie said as the rest of us took our first barefoot steps into the forest.

While it wasn't exactly fun walking barefoot through the woods most of us made it okay. Tom and Adam managed to step on the same sharp stick and they both were limping by the end of our journey, but we didn't have to go that far. It was only about fifty feet or so to the feeder. And even before we got anywhere close we could see a few deer farther back in the woods. As we began to get closer to the feeder they began to get closer as well. They seemed very tentative about approaching such a large group of humans, but once Tim took the lid off the feed barrel they shot towards us.

There were 4 or 5 deer who showed up to grab the free meal. Most of them were female deer, but there was one male with them. He seemed like the leader of the group and was the first one to reach us when we first showed up.

"A feur point," Billy said suddenly, "Not that amazin, but I've killed a few of em befur."

The deer looked up at Billy almost as if it was saying 'I'm more amazing than you know', but once he heard the food being dug out of the plastic bin his attention quickly snapped back to that. "Here," Tim said as he poured some of the food out into his hand, "watch this." He stuck out his hand with the food in it and the male deer gave it a few cautious sniffs before digging in.

"Sweet," Adam said as he watched the deer eat out of Tim's hand, "who wants to acquire him?"

"I do," all of the males replied.

"Wait," I said quickly, "you can't all be the male. Not only would it look strange when four deer with the exact same antlers show up in a pack together, you've got to keep the instincts in mind. Remember how the Animorphs always had trouble morphing into multiple wild creatures that were male? The male animal's instincts take over and they begin to fight for dominance. I guess it won't matter after we get used to controlling a morph's instincts really well, but for now I don't think we should risk it. Only one person should get to morph the male and the rest of us can be a female."

"You know," Adam said slowly, "I think she's got a point." Then after a small pause he said, "Alright, there's only one way to settle this..."

The four-way rock, paper, scissors match was fairly intense, but eventually there was a winner. "Hell yeah!" Billy said as his scissors beat Adam's paper, "looks like I'm-a-be dominatin y'all!"

"Yeah, whatever," Adam said dejected, "it's only one single morph." He let out a sign before continuing. "You've seen Tim do it so it shouldn't be too hard. Everyone grab some food and find your favorite."

I was the last one in line for food so I didn't even bother getting any. I just waited for someone to be done acquiring their deer so I could acquire it while it was still in a trance. Luckily for me Angie was really good at acquiring animals so I acquired the same one as her... followed by Adam since he didn't have any luck with his own deer. Everything went kind of smoothly until it was Billy's turn to acquire the male. Everything started out nice, but when it looked like the male wasn't going to accept Billy's food for whatever reason he lunged at it.

He managed to get a good grip on the deer's antlers and gave them a real quick twist. The deer lost it's balance and fell over onto it's side. Billy took that as an opportunity to jump on top of the deer and pin it down. It squirmed like mad for a few seconds, but after that it slowly began to relax. Everyone just looked on in shock as Billy eventually got up and let the deer go free. It just laid there for a few seconds, but just as we all began to think it was dead it suddenly sprang to life. It quickly got back onto it's legs and ran away into the forest.

"Nothin like a lil deer wrestlin," Billy said with a chuckle as he checked himself out for any injuries (nothing but a few scrapes and cuts).

"What the hell was that?!?" Angie yelled as soon as she could, "You could've killed the thing!"

"Now it's never going to come back here," one of the twins said.

"Did you really have to pin it to the ground just to acquire it?" Adam said sounding a bit in awe.

"Chill out guys," Billy said in return, "I didn't hurt it. Besides, I've wrestled bulls as big as that before. Ain't nothin to it."

There was still kind of a shocked silence in the group until Adam finally said, "Alright, whatever. We've all got deer morphs now. How about we try them out instead of flying over to The Birches. They're not that far from here, right?"

"If we are where I think we are The Birches are that way," Billy said sticking out his arm. "It ain't that far."

"Okay, sounds good. This way we don't have to risk morphing inside The Birches... at least until we get a good look at it."

"The Birches is huge and we don't have a lot of time," I said quickly. "My brother is picking me up at eight from your house."

"So lets stop talking and start morphing then," Adam added. There wasn't much I could other than what he said.

Morphing a deer was a bit different than morphing into a bird. It's body was much more human-like in size and features so it was quicker and less...gruesome to morph into. I felt my pelvis contort and my nose shoot outwards, but other than that it wasn't so bad. My legs grew long and my ears stretched a bit but I hardly noticed any of that. Before I knew it I was done morphing and I found the instincts pretty manageable. The deer was at home in the woods and it was surrounded by other deer so it felt safe. The first thing I really noticed after my morph had finished was that there was a bunch of good looking food all over the ground. I bent my neck down to eat some of it, but right before my lips made contact I heard, _five second rule, right?_

That instantly snapped me out of daze and I quickly took control over the deer's instincts. _ I...uh,_ I said as I raised my head back up.

_Don't worry about it,_ Adam said with a small laugh, _it does look kind of appetizing... at least to my morph it does._

_Don't take this the wrong way or nuthin,_ Billy said suddenly, _but y'all a group of nice lookin' females. If we didn't have sumthin else ta do I'd probably..._

_That's more than I ever want to hear again_, Adam interrupted sounding a bit embarrassed.

_That's just gross,_ Angie added shortly after.

_What?_ Billy said as if he'd done nothing wrong, _you can blame my male deer brain fur bein a male deer brain..._

_Let's focus here,_ Adam said sounding a bit annoyed now. _You said that you can lead us to The Birches Billy, so lead away._

_Ya mean I don't get ta run behind ya and look at your behinds while we... _ Billy started.

_Just go!_ Both Tim and Tom shouted at once.

_Calm down,_ Billy said jokingly, _I was only playin._ He looked around for a bit before finally saying, _I think we're supposta go this way. _He began jumping and darting through the woods while the rest of us began to follow him.

Being a deer is kind of fun actually. They're really good at making their way through the forest almost effortlessly... once you learn to balance their instincts with your own directional needs... At least I wasn't the only one to run straight into a tree a few times. Tim, Adam, and Angie all did it at least once in the first few minutes. But eventually I got the hang of it (just like flying) and we made good progress.

The only serious problem we had was roads. It was right around the time that most people got out of work so the roads were full of cars. We had to be really careful when crossing even the smallest roads because there was always the chance that a car would come barreling down it. Billy almost got hit once when we decided to cross near an almost blind curve. Luckily the driver screeched to a halt just as Billy was jumping out of the way. The rest of us followed like ducklings followed their mother and the scared driver slowly took off after we all crossed. Other than that though it was sort of fun running through the woods. And just as I was starting to get tired we finally made it to the edge of the birches.

_I think this is tha edge of The Birches_, Billy said as he slowly came to a halt, _although they are expandin pretty fast. Don't know how much longer this'll be the edge._

_How can you tell?_ Adam responded quickly.

_I can't tell_, Billy said back, _I just know. I've lived here my whole life and I'm darn proud of tha place. I make it my job to know what's goin on round here and I heard some people talkin bout The Birches about a month ago. They said that Poplar Creek was now one of tha boundaries. Well, there's Poplar Creek._

We all turned to look at the small rippling creek running down a small gully not that far in front of us.

_Do you believe everyone you hear talking about stuff? _Adam said probably a bit meaner than he meant.

_You got any better info?_ Billy replied back smugly.

Everyone was quiet for a few moments before Adam finally said,_ Alright, lets go. We're here to get a feel for the place and to see if we can spot anything out of the ordinary. Let's slowly make our way around the perimeter while keeping our eyes open. And make sure to act like normal deer. Take a bite of grass or something every few minutes._

_Gross,_ Angie pointed out.

_It's not gross to your deer instincts,_ I replied. _Just give them control for a moment and see._

_We don't have time to try things out right now,_ Adam said quickly. _We still have to make it back to my house before eight. So lets start searching._

So, following Adam's lead, we all began slowly walking through the woods while keeping an eye on the nearby houses for anything suspicious. We kept our distance at first, but as our surveillance progressed we began to get a bit braver and wandered closer to the houses. We had to have walked by close to fifty houses before I finally had to say, _Nothing! We've found nothing unusual this whole time. Every house looks completely normal and everyone who lives in them seems completely normal as well. There's kids playing outside, there's parents coming home from work with pizza, there's even a guy hooking up someone's satellite TV. There's no Yeerk pools, there's no evil dystopian zombie people walking around, there's nothing!_

Everyone stopped and looked at me after I was finished with my outburst. _Um... sorry,_ I said quietly. _I'm just getting a bit frustrated I guess._

There was a bit more silence before Adam finally said, _You're right though. We haven't really found anything._ He paused for a moment and then said, _It's getting late anyway. We should probably start heading back. Lets get deep into the woods before we start to morph though. Getting caught morphing, especially by a controller, would not be good at all._

_I think I'm just gonna head back to your place like this,_ Billy said. _It's kinda fun bein a deer._

_You still have to morph,_ Adam said sternly. _I don't know how long it's been since we last morphed... someone really needs to bring a watch or something next time. You don't want to be stuck as a deer do you?_

_I dunno, _Billy said back, _it's kinda fun bein a deer._

_Well then, _Adam added, _you go do that and we'll all stay human thank you very much._ He slowly turned and started heading into the forest. Everyone soon began to follow him. Even Billy decided to join us eventually and we all began to demorph. Some of us decided to go back to our deer forms but others, including me, decided to switch back to the bird morph. I guess that after I got the hang of flying it was actually kind of fun and I kind of wanted to try again. Anyway, after everyone had morphed we began our journey back to Adam's house. It was a bit harder to find our way at first, but once someone found a decent landmark we adjusted our course and made it to Adam's house just in time.

We landed in the woods behind his house and demorphed in the near darkness by now. Adam was the first one to enter his house and once he gave the all clear the rest of us followed him into his room. It was a tight fit for all of us to squeeze in there at once, but we somehow managed to get all of our clothes on and backpacks sorted out. Just as I was about to check my phone for messages it actually began to ring. It was my brother calling to say that he was almost here to pick me up and that I should get ready to leave.

Within a few minutes most of the parents decided to show up as well and we all said goodbye to each other. My brother was relatively silent on the way home about my "project" and I was really relieved. I'd forgotten what I told my family it was supposed to be about and I didn't want to say the wrong thing. Luckily it didn't seem like he really cared much.

Before I knew it I was home. There was enough time left in the day to finish my homework and check my email before my bedtime. (Yes, I still have a bedtime. Blame it on my parents.) While I was lying in bed all I could think about was 'well, I guess the day wasn't _totally_ wasted...'


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

After four missions and almost a month later we still couldn't find anything unusual about any section of The Birches. And it's not like we've just been running around the perimeter either. For our next mission we went deep into The Birches and on the third mission we went all the way to the center. We even staged a mission at night just in case The Yeerks used that time to do something. But we saw nothing; not a damn thing. And, believe it or not, I was getting a little frustrated wasting my only day off walking through the forest as a deer.

And I wasn't the only one either. I talked to some of the other members in private thought-speak a few times and most of them agreed with me. I know this might sound mean or whatever, but you need to put yourself in our position. We basically wanted to forget that we knew anything about the Yeerks so we could stop wasting our time watching normal people do normal, everyday, boring things. I didn't really care about the controllers who were suffering anymore. I didn't _see_ any controllers who were suffering, so how was I supposed to feel sympathetic for them? We all knew that our encounter with the Ellimist had to be real because we really did have the power to morph, but we were starting to doubt the things he told us. We made some crude attempts at explaining why he would lie to us about everything, but in all honesty we didn't know. We were just starting to care less and less about doing what he told us to do.

I left my house that day intending to quit the group. This was going to be my final mission. If we didn't find anything conclusive that told us there were Yeerks living in The Birches then I wouldn't be coming back the next time. Little did I know just how conclusive the evidence would be...

By this point we were all comfortable just meeting up at a designated location. This made it a bit easier to get away from our parents. We didn't have to pretend that we had some project to do. We simply said we were going for a walk and then flew to the meeting. Well, at least that's what I did. Some of us had different excuses and some of us preferred to travel as deer.

I had grown to like being a bird actually. You had the entire sky to work with and it just made me feel so free. I wasn't used to feeling that much freedom and I was kind of drawn to it. It could be a bit scary at times but my bird instincts always kicked in when I needed a bit of help. Once you learn to control your instincts completely flying becomes almost natural. I didn't even have to think about it anymore; I just opened my wings and flew.

On this particular day we were meeting in The Birches: South next to a little stream we passed by the last time we visited. We planned to meet right by the alleged outskirts of The Birches, but just because they were outskirts didn't mean that they were completely woodland. There were still some houses in the area although none of them were dramatically close to our proposed meeting spot. Still, I knew I was going to have to pass close to at least a few of them on my way there.

I was able to spot the group from the air right where they said they'd be. _Sorry_, I said out to them in thought-speak, _I'm running a bit late. I had to answer a few questions from my parents before I left. I'll be down in a second. _

I always liked how everyone would instantly start searching the skies for me right after I said something in thought-speak... although they never could find me before I landed. I was too small and bright to see against a sunny sky, but they did it every time regardless. It's just kind of funny to see everyone standing there with their heads pointed up and searching in every direction...

There was one small problem though. My trajectory was taking me right next to a house and I didn't want to risk being seen by anyone. They might think nothing of a brightly colored bird flying past their window if they can even see it, but then again they might become suspicious when a tropical bird shows up wildly in Northeastern Pennsylvania. That's something we didn't need even if this _was_ going to be my last mission.

Because of that I had to alter my course a bit to miss a direct flyby, but that put me within the sights of another house. But, since I was reasonably far away from both of them as far as human eyes go I decided to risk it. So, giving my tired wings a break, I glided on down and made my pass in between both of them.

I was able to grab a quick look inside both houses as I flew by just to make sure that no one was watching me. The house I was originally going to fly by seemed empty. The house was dark and I couldn't see anyone in any of the windows. But when I turned to look at the other house I saw... something strange. I only caught a faint glimpse of it, but I could've sworn that I saw a robot sitting on a sofa...

Most people would've just let it go, but not me. I'm a huge robot fan. It's no coincidence that my favorite anime is about mechs. And even though I only caught a quick glance at something that I thought looked like a robot I still had to investigate. I was too curious not to.

Not really using the best judgment I made a quick U-turn and began heading towards the house. At worst I figured I'd just seen a blur of something made of metal, but I was kind of hoping to see a helper droid or something like that. I landed on the edge of the windowsill and slowly peaked in.

[A helper droid in kind of like a robot for old people. Back in your time they were still under development, but things such as the ASIMO by Honda were starting to become workable. Add in twenty more years of R&D and you've got yourself a few different models that actually help either old or crippled people around the house. They're still really expensive so only really rich people can afford to have them, but I've always wanted to see one up close. And if I was going to see one anywhere around here it would have to be in The Birches.]

The curtain was only partially pulled over the window so, even though it was fairly dark in the house, I could still see inside. And what I saw really amazed me. It was a robot! There was no doubt about it! But it was unlike anything I'd ever seen before. It definitely wasn't any helper droid that I ever heard of. It's head in particular was shaped like a dog's head... a cartoon dog's head. It looked more like something that you'd see in Disneyworld rather than a helper droid. But that only made me more interested in what it was. Was someone building it themselves? Oh man! If I knew someone who could build fully functioning robots I'd probably...

Before I could finish my thought I heard, _Alex, are ya okay?_ run through my head. _Where are ya?_ Billy added for clarification.

_I've just seen the most awesome thing ever!_ I said way too excitedly. _You've gotta come and check this out!_

_Where are ya?_ Billy repeated.

_I'm, um..._ I said while trying to take a step from the situation, _I'm by the light blue house. I'm on the windowsill actually._

There was a small moment of silence before Billy replied with, _Adam wantsta know what yer doin on the windowsill of someone else's house._

_There's the coolest looking robot sitting in here!_ I replied. _You've gotta see this thing! _

_Adam would like ya ta get away from a possible controller's house as fast as possible... puttin it nicely, _Billy relayed back. But his request fell on deaf ears at the moment.

_I'm going in to take a closer look, _I said back without really thinking what I was doing. While gazing into the room I had noticed a doggy door conveniently located in the front door. I was planning on using it to get inside and have a closer look.

I thought I heard Billy say something else but I wasn't really paying attention at that point. I fluttered on over to the front door and quickly fluttered on up to the doggy door threshold. I had to push the door out of the way with my beak (not such an easy task when you're barely the size of a soda can), but I was eventually able to squeeze through and make it inside.

After my eyes adjusted to the low levels of light I quickly fluttered up onto the couch and stood right next to the robot. _This is amazing! _ I said to no one in particular. _ I've never seen anything like this! The construction is so simple yet so complex at the same time! I can't even see any of the motors that move the legs or arms. They're all hidden away somewhere... or maybe they're not installed yet. I'm not even sure what kind of metal this is made out of. It's not really shiny yet not really dull either. It doesn't look like aluminum or steel or anything I know really. And the face... wow, someone really did some interesting work on that! It doesn't even have real big sensors for eyes. I wonder how well it can see. I wonder if it could walk? How fast can it run?_

I was finally interrupted by Adam's angry thought-speak. _ What the hell do you think you're doing Alex?_ he said loudly in my head. _You can't just go barging into possible controller's houses like this! Are you trying to get us all captured or something?_

_Relax_, I said back calmly. _No one's home, or no one's around anyway. The lights are all out. And just look at this thing! It's amazing! Whoever lives in this house much be a robotics technician or something. This certainly isn't a production model. I've never seen anything like it before!_

_Alex,_ Adam said slowly. _Get. Out. Now._

_In a minute, _I replied. _I just wanna get a good look at it's face. Someone's gone through a lot of trouble to make it look like a dog and the handy-work is amazing. I mean, you don't even have to put a shell on it or anything. I think it looks really cool the way it is._

As I was relaying this information to Adam I was busy fluttering up and down the robot's body just taking in the sights. But when I ended up perched on his "nose" I began to feel something change. I wasn't sure what it was at first, but it kind of sounded like someone was turning on an appliance or something deep inside the house. But when I strained to listen I got the surprise of my life. All of a sudden the robot's "eyes" flashed red and I heard someone say, "I'm being attacked by a talking bird. How dreadful," in a very melancholy tone of voice.

I instantly panicked. My animal instincts took complete control over me and I began to feel like I was trapped inside the small room. I had to get out and I had to get out quick. But the only problem was that there was no way I could go. The rest of the house was dark so I didn't want to go in that direction. A bird doesn't grasp the concept of a doggy door very well so that didn't even cross my mind. But I did see a slightly exposed window with some light shining through it. Once I had fluttered far enough away from the robot to feel "safe" I quickly dove towards the window.

Of course birds don't really understand the concept of glass very well either and I ended up bumping my head into it pretty hard. I tumbled on down to the floor and eventually landed on my back. I was a bit dazed but I was relatively unhurt. I barely had any time to steady myself though. As soon as I was back up on my feet I noticed that the robot was standing right in front of me. I was trapped between him and the wall with nowhere else to go. In a last ditch effort to save my life I opened up my wings as far as I could and let out a series of piercing screeches.

"It's not your fault," he said in the same depressed sounding voice as before, "everyone who meets me ends up running away. I've grown used to it by now."

He slowly bent down until his reflective colored eyes were almost at my level. "What is such a brightly colored bird doing in such a depressing place?" he asked suddenly.

I slowly folded my wings back in and closed up my beak, but I remained silent.

"I'm used to people not talking to me," he said back with a heavy sigh. "I heard you and your friends talking before so I know you can, but feel free to disregard me like all the others have. You'll probably be better off for it anyway."

I looked around the room for a bit as if looking for some help, but there was no one coming to my rescue.

"And just for the record," the robot continued, "you were wrong about everything you said about me. I'm not amazing and I'm not interesting. I'm really quite substandard."

_No... no you're not_, I squeaked out somehow. _You're the coolest robot I've ever seen! Whoever made you must have been a genius!_

"Ah, the one thing I cannot speak illy towards," the robot answered. "My creators were in fact geniuses compared the people on this planet. But I won't say anymore until you tell me who you are and what you're doing in a morph. My secrets are too valuable to trust to someone so simple without some collateral information."

I didn't know whether to be amazed or insulted. He had just called me simple, but he also implied that he had come from another planet! I wanted desperately to hear more about him, but at the same time I was still weary of telling him who we were. If he was a Yeerk robot then we'd probably all be dead or controllers very soon if I told him anything. Right now all he knew was that someone with the power to morph had come into his house, nothing more. If I left now our secret would still be safe for the most part. But...

"I realize that this might be a very important decision for such a simple being, so why not discuss it further with the rest of your group?" Then he stood up and placed both of his hands against the wall. All of a sudden the house began to shake with his voice. "Attention others outside. I would like to inquire further into who you are and what you are doing here. I very rarely say this to anybody, but if you're here for what I think you're here for then I may be able to help you."

_Alex_, I suddenly heard Adam say inside my head, _are you okay? What's going on in there?_

"He is unhurt," the robot replied through the house before I could say anything.

_You can hear us?_ I heard Adam respond quickly.

"Yes I can," the robot replied, "quite clearly in fact. And I'm afraid that 'bustin' through a window' as you say will not be the best course of action in this circumstance, although replacing windows in my own home seems just like the kind of boring and menial task that I do constantly regardless. A simple entrance through the front door will be sufficient."

_Hey_, I said to the robot while Adam and the group fell silent, _I'm a she not a he._

"Pardon me," the robot replied. "This proves just how worthless I can be at times. I can't even guess the correct gender of a human."

_Aw,_ I said instantly feeling sorry for him, _you're not worthless._

"More fake sympathy," the robot replied, "just what I needed." But before I could answer he thrust his hands against the wall once again am said, "I already know that you're humans, or at least that some of you are. You can walk in through the door with your human morphs. And you will not become controllers if you come inside. Although, having someone to share my anguish and boredom with doesn't really sound like such a bad idea at times."

It was quiet for a bit more before I finally said, _Don't take this the wrong way or anything, but why are you so... depressed? _

"It's a sad and pitiful story," answered the robot. "However, you may be able to hear it if I think your secrets are a satisfactory exchange." He paused for a moment before adding, "You know you can demorph at any time. I sympathize with you wanting an escape from your normal body, but your friends will all most likely be in their human forms." I had nothing to say to that so I simply began demorphing.

Just around the time I was finishing up I heard a knock at the door. The robot glumly began to walk over to the door so he could undo the several locks he had on it. Once he had unlocked everything he gently swung open the door to reveal Adam standing there in his morphing attire.

"Give me one good reason why we should trust you," Adam said suddenly.

"We don't have time for this," the robot replied as he grabbed a hold of Adam's shoulders and basically tossed him inside. "The rest of you must make haste," The robot said shortly after. Everyone else popped up fairly quickly from around the house and walked in through the door.

"What was that for?" Adam said soon after the robot closed the door. "That kind of hurt," Adam added as he began gently rubbing his shoulder.

"Even though this is slightly beyond the Yeerk colony's territory that doesn't mean they're not watching," the robot answered. "If anyone saw a bunch of scantily clad kids walking into my house they'd start to get suspicious. I have a bad enough life as it is; I'm not actively trying to make it any worse."

"What do you know about the Yeerks?" Adam asked quickly.

"A great deal more than you do by the look of things," the robot replied almost snidely. "But before I can tell you anything I need some information from you first. Who are you, how did you get the power to morph, and what are you doing here?"

"Again," Adam began, "why should we trust you with anything?"

"Why trust pathetic old me?" the robot replied sadly, "You won't do it because I seem incredibly trustworthy, but you'll do it because I may have information you could use." He let out a sigh before adding, "That's all anyone ever does is use me for their own gain. No one cares what I think or what I feel..."

Adam and the rest of the group were sort of stunned at the robot's response. He turned around to everyone else in the group and began to talk very quietly (I was still on the other side of the room for no real good reason). Eventually the meeting dissolved and Adam turned back around, "Alright," he began cautiously, "we'll tell you about us. But if you try to pull anything we've got some powerful morphs that we could use to escape."

"Oh joy," the robot said sarcastically, "conversations always turn out well when they begin with threats."

Ignoring the robot's words Adam began by only telling him everyone's first name. Then he went through and told the robot just how we had gotten the power to morph, what the Ellimist had said to us, and what we were doing inside his house.

"What a sad story," the robot said after Adam had finished. "You were unwillingly thrust into a war that you do not understand and expected to fight to the death for a cause you don't truly believe in. I don't get to say this very much at all but I actually feel sorry for _you_."

Everyone's gaze kind of shifted towards the ground when he said that. I'd never really thought about it like that before and I didn't really know what to say. He was right I guess, but I didn't really like the way he said it. It felt... foreboding.

After a bit of silence Adam finally came back and said, "So, you've heard about us. Now what about you? Who are you? Where did you come from? Who made you? And what can you tell us about the Yeerks?"

"Well," the robot began, "it is a long and depressing story. If you must know then I have no choice but to tell you. Your story seems feasible although quite strange. But I cannot deny the fact that you have the power to morph so unfortunately I must trust you... even though I have been betrayed many times throughout my long life. My story starts a very long time ago on a planet very far away from here..."


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

"I was created many millennia ago by a race known as the Pemalites," the robot began. "They were a very... playful race. They constructed me and the others like me just so they could have somebody else to play with. I know I seem rather atrocious now, but they originally modeled and programmed me in their own image. Many millennia ago I was quite a happy and playful robot."

"I enjoyed many generations of my master's company before my history becomes depressing. My masters were a very peaceful race so they weren't expecting their planet to suddenly be invaded. But all of a sudden wave after wave of a race called "The Howlers" began to descend onto our planet. My masters quickly surrendered the planet after only a few of them were killed, but The Howlers wanted more than just control over our planet. They wanted to exterminate my master's race entirely. We had no defense against them so we ended up simply fleeing."

"A couple hundred of my masters managed to escape the destruction of our planet by boarding one of their ships and breaking through The Howlers barricade. My masters also managed to bring 102 of their Chee, which is what they called us, on board with them so that they could continue to play on their journey. But tragically that journey would not last long for most of them. Before we were able to leave the planet The Howlers managed to release an incredibly deadly virus which ended up infecting and killing all of my masters."

"This might seem somewhat humorous to you, but my masters had originally intended to make this planet their new home. They had visited it before and had found it quite enjoyable. But when we landed on it's surface there were only four of my masters who were still alive. We did everything we could to find a cure for the virus but nothing seemed to work. We even tried to use substances which were native to this planet, but no matter what we did the virus kept multiplying. Eventually we could do nothing more to save them."

"However, on our quick explorations of this planet we found a creature that seemed somewhat similar to our master's composition. You'd call them wolves. And our masters decided that if they couldn't survive in their own form then they'd like their essences to live on. So, our last remaining masters instructed us to fuse their essences to the wolves so they could at least live on in spirit. This is where the animals you know as household dogs came from. Their playfulness is largely due to our master's essence deep within them. It wasn't a perfect match at first, but through some selective breeding we managed to create a fairly good representation of our masters."

"We would've been perfectly happy spending the rest of our long lives playing with our masters in their new forms, but one day a group of humans wandered up to our ship. In our playfulness we decided to share our masters with them, but they were quickly scared away by our presence."

"Playfulness isn't the only attribute our masters gave us. We were also very inquisitive just like our masters had been. Now that we'd been contacted by a seemingly intelligent native race we wanted to learn more about them and the planet we were on. So, we all decided to adopt a human projection to see if they'd react more favorable to us."

"What do you mean 'human projection'?" I asked suddenly.

"It's what we've been doing for thousands of years," the robot said. "Our masters have gifted us with their greatest achievement, optical camouflage. We have the ability to make ourselves look like anything we wish."

All of a sudden the robot disappeared. All that was left in his place was an old wooden chair. And then a moment later a small palm tree took it's place followed closely by a dog. And then, all of a sudden, there was a very drudge-looking human standing where the robot had been.

[Drudge is a term that's meant to describe people who always look and act depressed. Doing some research about your time frame I managed to find people referred to as "goths" and "emos" which when mixed together in different aspects sort of resemble someone whose drudge.]

The person, or rather the human projection from the robot, was a guy in his late twenties who had on some black lipstick, way too much dark eyeshadow, black nail polish, and his shoulder length black hair was a tangled mess. He was also dressed completely in black, but his actual clothes were mostly covered by a black trench coat with a pair of heavy black army boots rounding out his attire.

"This is my human form," the robot continued, "I've been using it for the past fifteen years to hide my true identity away from humans." Then he added, "Not that any human would want anything to do with me anyway..."

"Anyhow," he said as he reverted back to his robot self, "the other Chee and I adopted representative human projections and began to make visits to human tribes. The first few visits were fairly awkward, but once we'd gathered enough information about how humans acted we became very good at mimicking them. So, in order to learn all we could about their society, we decided to try and blend with them."

"Some things proceeded more smoothly than others. Although humans enjoy playing games occasionally early humans seldom had time for such things. They were more focused on survival than enjoyment which none of us was accustomed to. Sure, doing "work" is necessary sometimes, but even that usually turned into a game with my masters. Not so for early humans. Not so for humans alive today either. Another thing that they did which we were completely against was the killing of animals for food. Our masters had programmed us to not cause harm to any living thing. Although there are some moral loopholes in our programming, completely killing an advanced living being is strictly forbidden. Thankfully these early humans grew to understand our hesitance on the subject and allowed us to preform less violent duties within their communities. Also, they didn't seem to enjoy our masters very much. At least the adults didn't seem to enjoy them very much. The children were fairly playful so they enjoyed them quite a bit more. But I'll never forget the day that I saw one of my masters being prepared to eat over a fire... From then on we decided to hide our masters from the humans, at least until they could survive without having to eat our masters for food."

"However, we began to grow very fond of humans despite what we called their "flaws". Just because we refused to share our masters with them didn't mean that we wanted to abandon them entirely. We decided to remain a part of their society in order to study them more, and we're still doing the same thing to this day. We've seen all of the major landmarks and undertakings throughout your species' history."

"No way!" Both Tim and Tom said at the same time.

"Unfortunately it's true," the robot continued. "The history of humans has been marred by my own inclusion within it."

There was a silence as everyone tried to understand what the robot had just said, but I had one really pressing question that I had to ask, and I saw the perfect opportunity to do it.

"So," I began suddenly, "you said that you were originally programmed like your masters: very happy and playful, right?"

"That is correct," the robot replied in the same dreary tone that he had been talking in the entire time.

"So," I continued, "if you don't mind me asking, why do you seem so depressed all of the time?"

The robot let out a heavy sigh and said, "This is the most depressing part of the story. Are you sure you're prepared to handle what you might hear?"

I nodded my head and said, "Yeah, I want to know."

The robot let out another sigh as he said, "My personal story begins almost six hundred years ago. I was a traveling healer in the Inca empire, a common profession for most Chee even nowadays. I was walking along a small, high road that connected two small villages when I suddenly noticed a small error in my programming."

"My masters were amazing as I have stated before, but they were not perfect. About every five hundred Earth years or so a Chee could be expected to receive some type of software error that required fixing. In most cases it would take little to no time to fix, but the one I received on that day was generated from an unknown source deep within my programming. After I discussed the problem with the other Chee that were in the area it was decided that I should run a full diagnostic scan on my system. We always travel in packs just like our masters had. That way it's easier to form families and continue our existence within human civilization. And we've had our own "internet" for thousands of years which we can use to instantaneously communicate among one another."

"Normally a full scan would require several Earth years to accomplish, but I managed to pinpoint the problem down to a specific section of my program. Conducting a scan on that section should've only lasted approximately a day or so. And since I was far away from any possible human contact, and was not expected to return to civilization any time soon, it was decided that I should preform the scan immediately."

"I wandered off of the path a decent distance and began to climb higher up onto the mountain. There would be absolutely no reason for any human to do the same so I felt safe in my decision. You see, to preform a decent software scan we Chee must power down all but the bare bones of our systems to minimize interference, and this includes our optical camouflage. During my scan I would be completely useless... well, I still am completely useless regardless, but that's mostly due to what happened during that scan."

"There wasn't any real shelter near the top of the mountain, so I decided to preform the scan under one of the highest trees living in the tree-line. I wasn't worried about humans seeing me since I was so far up on the mountain and my body could handle everything else on it's own... at least I thought it could when I began my scan."

"Unbeknownst to me a sudden thunderstorm began to form soon after I began my scan. I had no perception of it since all of my external sensors were switched off. And the other Chee around me could not warn me about the approaching storm since my "Cheenet" receiver was switched off as well. So, I could do nothing but endure the storm... which wasn't anything extraordinary. I had done so with many storms since landing on this planet, but this time was different."

"I have no personal memory of what occurred next, but the other Chee who witnessed these events have filled in my memory. All of a sudden I sent out a large but very jumbled signal to all the other Chee in the area before going completely silent. Believing that I may have encountered a programming error they decided to send another Chee out to investigate. The journey would've taken an ordinary human approximately two days, but using our enhanced abilities it took only four hours for the other Chee to reach me. When she did reach me, I believe her name was Chasca at the time, she witnessed a still steaming pile of scrap metal. I have not changed much over the years from that moment onward, but I do suppose I have cooled down enough to stop steaming at any rate."

"After some investigation Chasca finally realized that I had been struck by a bolt of lightning. Normally this wouldn't have been a problem. We Chee have systems for dealing with high voltage and high amperage electric discharges. But since I had switched those systems off in order to preform my scan I was left venerable. And, as if foreshadowing the rest of my pathetic life, the one moment in which I was venerable many of my circuits just happened to be destroyed."

"There wasn't much Chasca could do on the side of the mountain, so, after some discussion with the other Chee in the area, it was decided that she should take me back to the ship and attempt to "repair" me there. Some alibi was made up for both of our disappearances and she quickly began the journey to the ship. Unfortunately it was located off the coast of Europe at the time so it was quite a long journey... all for naught I'm afraid."

"She spent the next year and a half "repairing" me. Some of the replacement parts were simply in storage on the ship. My masters never went anywhere without their Chee and therefore always carried some spare parts. Things which she wasn't able to find aboard the ship she constructed herself out of whatever materials she could find aboard the ship... or on the primitive earth. But even though my body eventually functioned once again and my basic programming was restored there was one small piece of programming that she couldn't fix... my personality chip."

"Even if we would have been programmed with instructions to fix the chip, which we weren't, she still wouldn't have been able to fix it. You see, each time a Chee was constructed by one of my masters the Chee would get their own personality chip with it's own unique personality, as programmed by whoever constructed them. It is the one thing truly unique to each individual Chee and it's the last direct link we have to our masters. Changing any coding on these chips is not only forbidden by our hardwired coding, but by the agreement we made to our masters after activation as well."

"My personality chip was very heavily damaged by the lightning strike. In fact, the only portion that is still readable is a very small section deep within the dark depths of the chip. It's original use was to store all the negative emotions to use as references against future actions. To put it simply for you humans, I need to know what being bad is so I can be good. But, since that is the only part of my personality chip which still contains legible data I must draw from it to function. And you can clearly see the results."

"So, after Chasca "repaired" me all of the Chee decided that I should continue pretending I was a human. But, just like everything else in my pathetic life from then on, it would be a catastrophe. No actual human ever wanted to be around me because I always depressed them. I always ended up becoming a hermit and living the rest of my life alone. No matter what civilization I was in, no matter what culture I was thrown into, it was always the same. But the other Chee forced me to continue pretending to being a human. Even after I caused the aptly named "Great Depression" they still wanted me to remain hidden as a human."

"Wait, wait, wait" Billy said all of a sudden, "howd'ya singlehandedly cause somethin' like that?"

"I didn't do it singlehandedly," the robot replied. "Investment in America during the 1920's was based on the unstable basis of margin buying which was one of the main reasons that the stock market collapsed and started off the Great Depression. But when a national newspaper reporter happened to overhear me talking about how the stock market was rubbish and how foolish everything was they ran a small story in a local New York newspaper which brought some serious doubt into the market and started the sell-offs. It took the stock market until World War Two, fifteen years, to fully recover. And everything could've possibly been avoided if I hadn't existed."

"But with the advent of radio and TV I rarely had to deal with people directly anymore. And now that the internet has been assembled I almost never have to deal with people personally anymore. I simply write up some very basic computer coding and that pays for my housing and everything else I need."

"Don't you ever get lonely?" I asked feeling sorry for the poor guy.

"Yes," he replied, "loneliness is one of my emotions that still function and I feel it often."

"Aww," I said suddenly, "you poor thing. You know, I could come and keep you company for a while. I'd love to learn more about how you work. I've loved robots all my life and..."

"Okay Alex," Adam said, "stop nerding out. You can get his technical specifications later. But right now we need to hear what he knows about the Yeerks."

"Right," the robot said sounding almost insulted, "it's always about what everyone else wants and never about me." I almost said something, but I knew Adam would've stopped me if I had tried. The robot let out a big sigh as he continued. "The Ellimist was correct. There are Yeerks here, although I have not previously heard all of the details you just described. There is a pool underneath the Birches. A small pool in comparison with the main ones constructed in California during the invasion, but a highly active pool nevertheless. I have seen it personally, although without their knowledge. The Yeerks haven't showed much interest in me after they invited me to a few of their "Birches Celebrations," so using my optical camouflage I followed a known controller down to the pool a few times. It's no surprise to me that they didn't care for me seeing as how that's everyone's reaction to me. In fact, their southern "border" hasn't moved in almost ten years because they don't want to include me as part of the Birches. And it's not like they haven't tried to evict me either, although they've been fairly unsuccessful at that even with all their power."

He took a small pause before continuing. "I know much about the Yeerks here in The Birches, but it's not just because I've been able to sneak into the pool complex a few times. You see, the controllers in this neighborhood have had their own private telephone line installed since before I moved here. They use it for different things at different times, but since it's a private line they mostly use it for semi-important colony business when face to face contact is not required or inconvenient. By tapping into this line it's fairly simple to decode the signals and listen to what they say. I've learned quite a lot about them this way."

"So," Adam said suddenly feeling enthusiastic, "what can you tell us?"

"I can tell you much," the robot replied, "but telling you everything I know all at once will achieve nothing. You will be far better off only knowing and focusing on only the things you need to know at the current time."

"You said that you had information on the Yeerks," Adam began sounding a bit angry, "but after we exchanged stories you don't want to tell us anything?"

"I never said I wouldn't tell you something. If you have a question then I'll answer it, but it would be pointless to inform you about the average power consumption of the modified Kandrona, at least at this point."

There was an awkward silence in the room as everyone tried to think of a question to ask. But, unfortunately, it seemed like everyone's mind had gone blank.

"Since there are no questions at this point lets talk about what comes next," the robot continued. "Before you take any action against the Yeerks you'll need to familiarize yourself with the area and their habits. And since your main target will be the Kandrona and the pool you will need to be familiar with the pool complex and how to secretly enter it through at least one of the entrances. Once you can preform this task easily then we will begin to formulate a plan on how to expose the Yeerks."

"And how exactly would we do that?" asked Adam quickly.

"It depends on what kind of morphs you have and how comfortable you are in them," the robot answered.

"Well," Adam replied, "we all have a cat, dog, deer, and parakeet morph."

"All of those will be inefficient when traveling to the pool," the robot replied. "In order to elude detection you will either have to morph a family's pet or something very small. A fly or other insect would be ideal. And you must be able to navigate well and maintain a grouping under many different circumstances while in the morph. There are not many functioning defense systems guarding the pool at this point in time, but the moment you are detected your job will become incredibly difficult. You will need to be flawless."

"So, what do you want us to do before you send us in?" Adam asked quickly. "Since you seem like you know what you're doing I'm going to trust you on this," he added a bit awkwardly.

"Ah, trust," the robot said, "the downfall of so many people, yet completely necessary for civilized life. The dichotomy is staggering." There was a silent pause before he continued. "Before I relay any useful information to you the other Chee insist that you prove you can be stealthy and adaptable. Fly morphs have worked well for the Animorphs so they are a natural choice for you. In fact, most of the other Chee insist upon them. Once you have acquired the morph then I will administer a test to see if you're ready to proceed."

"How do ya know what the other Chee want us to do?" asked Billy.

"We are all connected by a network as I said before," the robot answered sounding a bit annoyed. "All of them have been listening in to this entire conversation. Every Chee in the world now knows who you are and what you're trying to do. And they want me to inform you that they'll do whatever they can to help you. But I wouldn't believe them if I were you. They haven't done anything to help me in quite a long time..."

"Is our secret safe with them?" either Tim or Tom asked nervously.

"Once again these trust issues continue to surface," the robot replied. "Your secrets are safe. We have kept our own for thousands of years. _You _keeping _our_ secret is what really worries us. We have only told other humans about our existence three different times, this being the third. The first was in ancient Babylon almost 4,000 years ago and that was an accident. The second time... was to the original Animorphs. So we have had some experience dealing with Yeerks in the past."

"But the Animorphs never mentioned..." I stopped in mid-sentence as I figured out my own question.

"Just like we asked," the robot answered. "In fact, you can easily explain many of the "conspiracy theories" by simply inserting us into the story. Any other questions?"

I had a whole host of questions now that I knew they had been a part of the original Animorphs, but I was too embarrassed to ask any more. The others seemed to kind of feel the same way.

"Well then," the robot continued, "return here once you have a flying insect morph and some experience using it. I shall be here... most likely switched off since I see no reason to be operating most of the time."

"Um, okay," Adam said sounding a bit surprised that our meeting was ending. "Thanks for the help."

"No reason to thank me," the robot replied as he sat back down on his couch, "I haven't done anything. In fact I might have even made things worse for you. Only time will tell." There was a small pause before the robot's eyes shut off.

Not really knowing what to do Adam slowly began to lead the group out of the house. But just as I was about to leave I suddenly thought of a last minute question. "Excuse me," I said out to the limp robot, "do you have a name?" It might not have been the most important question I could've asked, but for some reason I was compelled to ask it anyway.

His eyes quickly switched back on and he said, "Yes, I do have a name for my human representation. Thinking it would be humorous my "parents" named me Marvin." Then, as quickly as they had switched on, his eyes shut off once again.

I was the only one to get the reference out of the whole group as we made our way outside.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

My name is Tim Davis. And my name is Tom Davis. We're the Davis twins. We're identical twins and we really do act like it. Even our parents have a lot of trouble telling us apart since we look and act so much alike. We have the exact same wardrobes and wear matching clothes every day, usually without even arranging it beforehand. We have the exact same hair style, exact same phone, exact same everything for the most part. We're both around 5'10'' tall with blond hair and blue eyes. We're both technically 15, but Tim is six minutes older than I am. Not that I'm bitter or anything... But we do have some other slight differences. We have our own separate rooms which is kind of unusual for identical twins, but it was mostly our parent's idea so they could tell us apart. We also have slightly different games on our phones...

Our main hobby is video gaming and we're pretty good at a few of them. I've reached semi-pro level on a few games including my favorite game ever, _Duke Nukem 5_. Tom on the other hand doesn't seem to appreciate how truly awesome _Duke Nukem 5 _is and has barely reached amateur level in it.

Tim can't seem to realize that, while _Duke Nukem 5 _is a good game, it's nowhere near as good as _The Colony 6_: the greatest game of all time. I've decided to spend my time reaching semi-pro in that game instead of _Duke Nukem 5_ because it's just better in every way.

We could argue about this topic all day and all night, and we usually do. To be honest both games are really good, but for some reason we have our own preferences. Still, we can both agree that _Youthanasia_ was a piece of crap.

[Twenty years into the future professional video gaming is considered a legit form of entertainment and almost a "sport" in some cases. Whenever a new high profile game comes out, like _Duke Nukem 5_ or _The Colony 6_, the International Gaming Coalition puts certain criteria on the game which determine what "level" a player would fall into based on his level of skill. For instance, in _Duke Nukem 5_ you need to have a multiplayer gamer score of at least 670 to be considered amateur and 930 to be considered semi-pro with anything above 1300 being considered professional. Along with this score you need to complete certain tasks within the game such as beating a boss without taking any damage or finishing the game with only one weapon. The semi-pro challenges are ridiculous while most of the professional challenges are downright impossible. But once you reach either a semi-pro or professional level you're then allowed to compete at various tournaments at that level.]

We don't really consider ourselves "professional" gamers though. We like to play video games a bit more than most other people do, sure, but we don't let them dominate our lives... for the most part. We still do our homework and get decent grades in school. We still hang out with other people occasionally as well. Sometimes we just play video games but other times we do non-video game related things. It helps that our parents are... how should I put this... somewhat better off than most other people around here, so we always have some cool non-video game thing to play around with all the time. Our go-karts was pretty cool until we got our ATVs. We try and get those out every once in a while and ride them around when we can. In fact, that's how we've been able to sneak out to survey The Birches every time. We go out ATV riding to some secluded spot in the woods, hide the ATV's in some shrubbery, morph, and fly out to our destination.

So, yeah. That's basically us. Now, on to the story! When we last left off we were just leaving Marvin's house. We made our way out the door before quickly sneaking back into the woods where it was "safe". Once we made it back to the spot we were originally in to start this whole thing we all just kind of stopped and stared at one another. It was almost as if we were all silently asking, 'So, now what?' Eventually, the stares all began to look towards Adam since he was the "leader" of the group.

"Well then," Adam finally said, "I guess we should go get some fly morphs then. Any suggestions?"

"There'r loads a flies at mah farm," Billy replied. "If yer lookin' fur flies then that's probably the place ta go. And it ain't far from here. My parents'll probably be out plantin' some seeds so they shouldn't bother us."

"Everyone alright with that idea?" Adam asked after Billy was done. "I still have about an hour before I have to get back home. Is everyone else alright on time?"

Everyone slowly nodded.

"Alright then," Adam said, "let's morph into our favorite travel morphs and follow Billy."

"You know," I said shortly after beginning my morph, "that would be the perfect place for a catch-phrase."

"It could be something easy to remember... something like, 'It's Morphin' Time'," Tim added.

"That sounds corny," Angie replied as her mouth began to deform.

_I kind of like it despite it's corniness,_ Alex said back. _It's certainly faster than saying 'everyone morph into your favorite travel morphs'._

_We'll have plenty of time to come up with catch-phrases later_, Adam interrupted. _But now we need to get some fly morphs if we want to get Marvin's help. Lead the way Billy._

As soon as Billy started running Angie started off behind him in her deer morph with everyone else following him from the air.

We got up to altitude before I finally said, _What kind of fly are we going after?_

_What do you mean what kind of fly? _Adam asked quickly.

_There are a whole bunch of different flies,_ Tom added in.

_There are big ones, small ones, and really small ones,_ I continued. _I think we should go as small as possible._

_Yeah, _Tom agreed, _you know how annoying one big fly can be when it's buzzing around your head._ _Imagine having six of them doing that at the same time_, I finished up.

_You've got a point_, Adam said before informing Billy of an approaching car near his road crossing point. _Hey Billy,_ Adam said afterwards, _you've got all sorts of flies at your farm, right? _

_Sure do, _Billy responded back slightly humorously. _We got all sortsa flies of every size'n'shape somewhere on the farm._

_We should try and acquire some fruit flies or something instead of a house fly,_ Alex chimed in.

_Well,_ Billy responded,_ it's spring time so we ain't got a buncha spoiled fruit lyin' around..._

It was then that Tim and I said, _Gnats_, in unison. _They'll be perfect_, I continued. _They're very small._ _Almost inconceivably small,_ added Tim. _And they like to hover around a central point – perfect for staying together._

_We probably got some of those around_, Billy replied, _but how we gonna acquire somethin' so tiny?_

Everyone was silent for a bit before Adam finally said, _I guess we can just stick our hands into the swarm. One of them has got to make contact with us at some point so we can acquire it, right?_

_This is going to be so gross_, Angie added in.

_The acquiring part won't be so bad_, Alex said after a small pause, _but morphing into them is going to be a bit scary. At least, that's what I've heard._

Since everyone's mind was busy picturing how they would look morphing into a gnat no one said anything for the rest of the trip.

Once we made it to the boundary of Billy's farm he called out to the rest of us, _I'ma go check it out an see if the barn is safe to morph in. That's where I left my clothes anyway. You guys see anyone doin' anythin' out'n the field from up there?_

_There's some dust or something in the air, but it's really far away_, Alex replied quickly.

_Good_, Billy replied, _that's probably my dad plantin' some corn. One less person ta worry about._

I watched from the air as Billy slowly made his way out of the woods and snuck up to the barn. He stuck his nose into the door which was left open a crack and slowly pushed it in all the way. There were a few tense moments before we all heard Billy say, _No ones comin', right?_

We all looked around quickly and saw no one. _The coast is clear_, I replied.

_In that case it's safe ta come on down then,_ Billy answered. _Angie can come in the same way I did, and the rest of y'all can fly in through the open hayloft. We just finished cleanin' the barn out a few days ago so it's actually kinda nice inside._

Since our wings were starting to get a bit tired from hovering above the farm we all quickly dove on into the barn. It's kind of weird diving into relative darkness at that speed. Your eyes barely have time to adjust before you run into a wooden beam...

Adam was first on through and just barely missed it. Alex was next and, taking a quick cue from Adam, swerved to avoid it. We were slightly behind her so both of us just barely managed to avoid it as well.

_Thanks for telling us about that beam there_, Adam said as he eventually perched on one of the other beams holding the roof up.

"Schowy," Billy said as his mouth was still morphing, "I never flew in as a bird before."

Adam just kind of let it slide when he said, _so where can we demorph_?

"Anywhere's fine," Billy answered. "Like I said before we just finished cleanin' out the barn for the spring. It gits pretty messy towards the end of the wintur."

_What do you use the barn for?_ Angie asked with a bit of nervousness in her voice.

"Well," Billy said as four birds glided down from the rafters and landed on the floor, "durin' the wintur we use it ta house all the animals, mainly our cows and such. By the spring it really starts ta smell in here. But once the warm weather comes we let the cows graze outside and we use the barn mostly for milkin' them. We don't have a lot a them, but we have enough ta stock our store with milk. We mostly grow sweet corn here which gets used ta make that high fructose corn syrup that everyone always talks about, but we need ta grow and sell other things to make some money."

[It was well known in the area that the Burger family farm was THE place to get the freshest fruit and vegitables when they were in season.]

"It still kind of smells bad in here," Angie added.

"Ya can't get every little smell out," Billy added as he threw on his shirt. "Ya should'a smelled it before we cleaned it."

Angie was kind of right. When I finally finished demorphing I could definitely tell that some animals had lived here. But the smell wasn't unbarable or anything, it was just higly noticable.

Once everyone had finished demorphing or getting dressed we all met up in a crude circle in the middle of the barn. It was quiet for a little bit before Adam finally said, "So, lets go hunting for some gnats." Then he added, "Man, I hate being without my phone. Do you have your phone on you Billy? What time is it?"

Billy reached into one of his overall pockets and pulled out a pretty old looking phone. "It's 6:15," he said after pushing a few buttons.

"Crap," Adam said quickly, "I've got to be home in 45 minutes. Let's hurry this up. Lead the way Billy."

"Ya act like I know exactly where a group of gnats likes ta hang out around this time," Billy said jokingly. "There's probably some gnats out there somewhere, we just need ta spread out and see if we can find em. The like hoverin' around in empty fields, and we definitely have some of those right now."

"Alright then," Adam replied probably feeling a little silly, "lets go then."

It was Adam who lead us to the door, but it was Billy who went out first to see if the coast was clear. Once he gave the okay we all followed him a short distance from the barn before we got into a sort of line formation. Each of us was spaced about three feet apart or so while we slowly walked forward checking for swarms of gnats. It wasn't long before we found one.

"I got a swarm over here," I shouted out as I basically ran right through it. Everyone quickly gathered around in a circle and watched as the swarm slowly reformed and then continued hovering around the same spot.

"Good work," Adam said back before hesitating a bit. "Only one thing to do now..." He added as he slowly stuck his hand into the swarm. He held it there for about a minute before finally saying, "I don't think this is working. I didn't feel any of them land on me or anything, and it really didn't _feel_ like I acquired anything. Let's see..." Adam pulled his hand out of the swarm, closed his eyes, and began to concentrate. After about another thirty seconds passed by he let out a sigh and said, "Nope, didn't work. I can't morph into one. Although, I'm not really sure what to think when I try. I mean, what does a gnat look like?" We were all kind of silent for a while as we thought about what to do.

"I've got an idea," I suddenly yelled out. "They don't want to land on your hand because they've got plenty of room to fly around and avoid it, right? What if we trapped them in something smaller? Then the swarm will be so dense that they couldn't resist landing on your hand, or at least running into it a whole lot more."

"I guess it's worth a try," Adam responded, "but what are we going to put them in?"

"A cup," I shouted out before my brother could. "We could swing it through the swarm to catch a bunch of them and then we could put our hand inside, or just on top of the cup, to keep them from escaping."

"That's better than anything I've got," Adam replied. "Do you have a cup around here anywhere Billy?"

"There's probably some lyin' around in the barn," he responded, "I'll go check."

We all watched as Billy made his way back to the barn. If a few moment he made his way back out carrying a small styrofoam cup. "This is all I could find," he said once he made it back to the group.

"It should work so long as the idea does," Alex said slightly optimistically.

Tom took the cup from Billy's hand and slowly ran it through the swarm of bugs.

When I looked inside after the first pass there were some gnats inside, but nowhere near what I thought there would be. But after a few more passes at varying speeds I began to get a decent amount inside the cup. Once my arm began to get tired I figured I had enough (the swarm was more of a disorganized mess at this point). After one last pass I quickly placed my hand over the top of the cup to seal the gnats in.

"Turn it upside down," I said once I saw Tom put his hand over the cup. "That way they'll be more likely to land on your hand."

I quickly turned the cup upside down and began to concentrate on... well, I thought about tiny little annoying flying specs. "This kind of tickles," I said as I felt the gnats bumping into my hand constantly, "but I think it might have worked." I gave my brother a look before quickly passing the cup on over to him. "Should I try it out?"

"We don't really have time to do anything with it," Adam said as he watched me concentrate on acquiring the gnats. "And besides, we've done a good bit of morphing today already, and we still have to get home yet. But, you can start to morph and see if anything happens. If something starts to happen then you know that it worked."

I closed my eyes and focused in on those tiny little annoying flying specs. Almost immediately I felt my body begin to shrink. I stopped my morph (not really a very hard thing to do once you break your concentration), but not before my nose jutted out into a foot long floppy tube of skin.

"GROSS!" Angie yelled as she quickly turned away.

"Don't worry," I said trying to be funny, "you'll have one of your own shortly."

I think Angie was actually close to puking at that point, but she managed to hold it in. She almost puked again when Billy eventually handed her the cup of gnats, but she somehow held it back a second time. After she passed the cup to Alex she didn't want to try out her new morph, but Adam basically forced her to after a short conversation. She didn't sprout a floppy nose, but for a moment there were two large protrusions sticking out of her back. They quickly disappeared as she reversed her morph.

The rest of the group had little trouble acquiring the gnats (except Adam. It took him twice to acquire one). After we all tested our new morph to see if it works Adam finally said, "So, now we have inconspicuous morphs. We just need some time to get together and practice using them. I have no idea what kind of test Marvin is going to be giving us so we've got to be ready for anything. Can we all meet next week?"

Everyone eventually nodded.

"Then I'll see you all next week," Adam continued. "We can talk about the details later, but right now I've got to get home." And with that Adam began to morph followed closely by everyone else except Billy. He kept a lookout for anyone who might be watching us.

_Oh_, Adam said before he left,_ I probably wouldn't try using the gnat morph by yourselves yet. We've all heard that insect morphs can be difficult even with a lot of experience. You'd be better off just waiting until we meet again to try them out fully._

An with that Adam spread out his tiny multi-colored wings and took off. Tom and I weren't far behind, but we started flying in the other direction with Angie running beneth us for part of the way. We made it back to our ATV's just as the sun was setting and managed to make it home while there was still some light left. We parked our ATV's in the garage, went into our rooms, and both of us fell down onto our beds and fell asleep. It had been a long day with a lot of morphing and we were both extremely tired.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Over the next few days we talked about when and where would be a good place to meet to try out our new morphs. We knew that we needed to be inside someone's house since that's where our "test" would be given, but we didn't really know anything else about the test, or what to do to get ready for it. So, without any specific information to help in our "training", we eventually decided that everyone should meet at our house. Our parents were usually out late – our mom is a lawyer and our dad is a doctor at the local hospital – so it would be the perfect place to practice with our morphs in secrecy.

We didn't have a specific day planned, but after school ended that Thursday we noticed that both of our parents had left messages for us on our cell phones. Our dad was going to be preforming a surgery until late at night and our mom was going to be staying late at the office to research her next case. Since we'd have the entire house to ourselves for the rest of the day we figured that it would be a good time to practice with our gnat morphs. Tim quickly called Adam once we got on the bus, and once we got confirmation that Adam was available we both began to call the others to inform them.

Alex and Billy couldn't make it, but we figured that Adam and Angie would constitute enough people to at least try out our morphs. Both of us were kind of anxious to see what being a gnat was really like actually. We'd both played a game called "S.W.A.T" which, although not exactly belonging to our favorite genre of gaming, was quite good. You play as various insects as they try to invade people's homes and get into their food and stuff. One of the insects you play as was a gnat and, to be as realistic as possible, they made you play with "gnat senses" which were usually pretty trippy. We were curious to see if actual "gnat senses" were as trippy as the video game said they were.

Since neither Adam nor Angie knew where our house was, so we decided to meet them somewhere where everyone could locate: the roof of the McDonalds on top of the mountain (by mountain we really mean small hill). We live kind of in a backwoods spot, so the only real landmark relatively close to our house was the one McDonalds. That's the only place we could really meet without having to fly a long distance ourselves.

We both flew over there in our bird morphs and perched somewhat inconspicuously on the roof of the McDonalds. Adam was the first one to appear, but Angie showed up in her deer morph relatively soon afterwards. As we flew back Tim focused on giving Angie instructions to follow while Adam and I stayed busy looking out for cars and people. Once we were back near our own house we landed/stopped a short distance before the woods ended to demorph (we lived in a pretty rural spot so there was little danger of being seen). After we were all human again it was fairly simple to walk up to the door and proceed inside our house.

"Your house is huge," Angie said when we first walked up to the door.

"It's pretty cool," I replied. "There's a lot of space to do stuff." "I remember when we use to play soccer in the living room when we were little," Tim added in as we walked into the living room. "That was always fun, although our parents didn't like it much."

"Did you break a lot of stuff?" Adam asked intrigued.

"Not a lot," I responded, "but enough to force our parents to hide all the soccer balls we had." I turned to Tim and smiled as he smiled back. Good times...

"So," Tim broke in, "where do you want to do this, and what do you exactly want to do?"

"I don't really know," Adam responded slowly. "Are you sure your parents won't be back for a while?"

"Unless the guy my dad's operating on dies or my mom's client drops the case then we're sure," I said back.

"How often does that happen?" Adam asked with a sort of concerned look.

"Very rarely," Tim chimed in.

"Alright then," Adam said as he thought about it for a second. "I guess it would be best to morph in as small a room as possible. That way, once we're gnats, we'll be able to find one another easier. Everything will probably seem enormous when we're that size, so the smaller the room the better. And after we morph and find each other then... I guess we could just spend some time getting use to how it feels being a gnat. We need to work on group control and cohesion as well, although we can't get too far without Billy and Alex here. Let's just see how it goes before we decide what to do." He took a pause for a moment before saying, "So, where's the smallest room in the house?"

Tim and I took some time to think before we both blurted out, "The hallway closet." "There's barely enough room for all of mom's shoes," I added in.

"Can four people stand in there at least?" Adam asked.

"Maybe," Tim answered tentatively.

"That's okay," Angie said quickly, "I'll just wait outside the closet thank you very much."

"You don't need to be scared Angie," I said back. Seeing where I was going with this Tim continued with, "You're only going to be locked in a closet in a stranger's house with three other guys that you barely know." "I can't see what could possibly go wrong," I added in with a small giggle.

Angie's expression changed to one of slight surprise and embarrassment before she said, "That's not it you pervs! It's just that morphing is disgusting on it's own. I don't need to be next to three other people to watch and hear them morph to make it any worse."

"I've got an idea," Adam said after a short break in the conversation. "Why don't we play a game of hide and go seek?" Everyone looked at him very strangely before he continued. "You know, in gnat form? Angie could go somewhere else in the house, not too far though or we'd be here all day, and then once the rest of us got the hang of being a gnat we could try and find you. It'd be a good exercise for us to test out our new gnat morphs, right?"

Everyone just kind of nodded after a little bit.

"Okay then," Adam said, getting into his leaderly role once again, "Show us where this closet is so we can see if this is going to work."

My brother and I turned around and began leading Adam back the way we came. We stopped at the last door before we exited the house and I slowly began to open it. Inside there was a clothes-hanger bar at the top with a bunch of winter coats and stuff hanging from it, and on the bottom there was a shoe rack crammed full of my mother's shoes. There was barely any floor space between the rack and the door, but Adam tentatively stepped in anyway. "Let's see..." he said as he slowly closed the door on himself. He almost had it closed all the way before he had to shift his feet sideways to make more room. We could hear him stumble and catch himself inside the closet, but eventually he made the door close all the way with a loud _CLICK. _

He quickly opened up the door and said, "It's a tight fit, but I think the three of us will manage to squeeze in here." He then looked at Angie and said, "Wait until all of us are securely in the closet before going into a different room. Don't go far or actually "hide", but get far enough away so that we'll have to search for you. Once you morph into a gnat then you can give us clues on where you went and how to find you. Hopefully we'll be able to get somewhere around where you are and eventually meet up with you. Then, we'll take it from there." Adam then looked back at us before saying, "Alright, everybody in." Tim and I looked at each other quickly before we began to make our way into the closet.

Adam wasn't kidding. It really was a tight fit! Adam had scooted down all the way to the wall and I barely had enough room to squeeze in at the end with Tim in the middle. Tim actually fell over the shoe rack as he was trying to give me more room, but instead of getting back up he just leaned back against the rack so the rest of us could have the room to ourselves. "This is a bad idea already," Tim said as he lay there uncomfortably.

While ignoring Tim, Adam called out through the door, "Okay Angie, go find somewhere to hide." He then turned back to us and said, "Alright, let's morph."

"It's Morphin' Time, remember?" I said before I started to morph.

I thought I saw Adam shake his head with disapproval before finally saying, "Alright, whatever. It's morphin' time."

"That's better," said Tim as we all started to morph.

My morph started out pretty normal at first. The first thing that happened was that I began to shrink... fast. I felt like I was falling to the floor, but unusually slowly. Then, all of a sudden, I felt a large floppy piece of flesh slap me against the face before I heard another crash on the far side of the closet. "Hey," I yelled out as I brought my hand up to sooth my face... only to find out that I didn't really have hands anymore. I quickly placed them back at my side so I wouldn't have to look at them.

"Sthorry," I heard Adam say sloppily, "mah probothkus..." and the rest sounded like he was trying to talk while drool poured out of his mouth.

"That's nasty man," I heard Tim say as there was some shuffling somewhere in the dark closet. "You're drooling on my wings!"

At this point I had probably shrunken down to about two feet in height, but other than my hands I was relatively unchanged. Then, all of a sudden, I felt a pressure boiling up inside my chest. I was about to stop my morph when I felt my skin split open and two arms shoot out of my stomach. One of them ran straight into the door while the other one ran into something else that was hard.

_Ow_, I heard Tim say inside my head, _what was that?_

_Sorry,_ I replied, _it was one of my arms. They just kind of shot out._

I think he said something back, but I was too preoccupied with what was happening to my body to understand just what it was. I could feel my insides liquefying as by bones turned to mush with a sickening squelching sound. My legs collapsed under the weight of my body and I fell backwards slightly, although at this point I was small enough to fall leaning up against the shoe rack instead of falling on top of it. My skin began to turn hard my eyes quickly went dark... not that there was much light anyway. I felt my small nose and mouth mold together into a thin straw-like mouth which stretched out in front of me before curling back in. My arms and legs shriveled up until they were thin as hairs before bending up into my legs. I felt my head and body swell up like balloons while my neck remained approximately the same size. It was then that I could feel two large "sacks" growing on my face which had to be my eyes. In a moment I notice my vision turn back on. I was small enough to see under the door at this point so my vision was flooded with light, but it was all very distant so I couldn't see anything. The only thing I could make out was the floor below me. A few other small changes occurred as well before I finally felt the changes stop.

I waited for something... anything to happen, but it didn't. My fruit fly brain wasn't incredibly interested in anything going on at the moment so it just kind of stood there looking around... although it couldn't really see much since it was dark. Directly in front of me there was a bright light shining through a large crack in the wall, but I still felt no drive to go out and explore by myself. In fact, the gnat was feeling pretty lonely at this point. He wanted to be in a swarm with other gnats. There was safety in numbers and he knew it. He didn't want to make any sudden moves either for fear of being detected by some kind of predator.

Then, all of a sudden, a signal. I picked up the faintest trace of a familiar "smell" from my antenna, and all of a sudden I knew that my swarm was close by. My wings quickly unfurled, and it felt like my body began to spasm as they started to vibrate. All of a sudden I was up in the air and out of control! I was upside down, right side up, spinning round in a circle... all in hopes of getting a stronger "scent" that I could follow. The bright beam of light emanating from under the door was my only point of reference as my body spun round and round in a completely disorienting fashion. At last I finally caught a good whiff on a faint breeze and my gnat body shot towards that direction.

It didn't take me long to find the source of the scent, but its maker was long gone. I waited at the spot for a few seconds, but then my gnat brain decided to go out and look for another spike in the scent. It knew that the swarm couldn't be far, and that there was safety in the swarm. My legs compressed and shot me upwards just as my wings began to vibrate hysterically once again. I continued to fly around aimlessly looking for another spike when it hit me. There were more spikes not far from where I was! I zoomed over in that direction and quickly felt a sort of attraction as I joined back up with my swarm... all two of them.

My gnat brain still wasn't all that happy with just two others being in my swarm, but it was happier than it had been when I was by myself. But once I had rejoined the swarm I noticed something strange. I had a hard time doing anything except rotating around a single point. I tried to fly away to search for others, but I just couldn't bring myself to leave the group. At the same time they were trying to lead the swarm in a different direction, and a weird feeling kept pulling me towards where they wanted to go whenever they moved. But all of our efforts to move seemed to cancel each other out and we simply rotated around a central point.

After doing a little bit of this I started to get a bit frustrated. But gnats aren't smart enough to get frustrated, right? That got me thinking, and before long I took control back from my gnat brain and reluctantly landed on the nearest surface I could. The other two gnats followed me slightly, but they remained unable to part with each other. That's when I finally remembered that I could talk to them. _Hey Tim, Adam, snap out of it_, I said loudly. _Take control of your morphs and get down here. There are no more members of our swarm so quit looking for them._

After a moment or two I heard Tim say, _Woah, I kind of lost it there for a minute. I forgot what was going on. _ He then landed fairly close to me before we both called out to Adam once again. He landed down next to us fairly quickly and said, _Sorry, the gnat mind got the better of me._

After some silence Adam added, _I wonder how Angie's doing._ He called out to her once and there was no response. He tried a second time and we got nothing back. That was when we started to get worried.

But, just before he could send out a third thought-speak shout, we all heard Angie frantically say, _I hate this morph. I really do. Morphing into this thing was sickening and I almost couldn't finish, but when I did my gnat instincts took over and I was as scared as I'd ever been before in my life. It couldn't find anyone else in its swarm nearby so eventually it just started freaking out! If you didn't snap me out of it I'd still be going crazy right now!_

_We all went through the same thing_, Adam replied in a sort of soothing tone, _but now that you've got control over it how are you doing?_

There was a pause before Angie replied with, _Better, but this thing is still disgusting. And everything looks different too. I'm not even sure where I am anymore._

_Well, _Adam replied, _what do you see close to you that you can describe?_

_I... I can't really see anything clearly_, Angie said after another pause. _Everything just kind of blurs together since it's so far away._

_While you try and find something you can describe to us we're going to try and figure out how to get this group flying thing down_, Adam replied.

_Ugh... _Angie said in disgust. _That means I'm going to have to fly again... I think I'm going to make myself sick before this is all through._

Ignoring Angie's complaints for the time being Adam turned his attention back to us. _You guys ready to try this again?_

_Yeah,_ I replied before adding, _since the gnats naturally want to stay in a group we could use that to our advantage. We all just have to decide on a direction to go and then we should be able to stay together fairly easily._

_Sounds good to me,_ Adam said in response. _So, should we all head for that bright beam of light coming from under the door?_

_Lets go_, Tim said echoing my sentiments.

_Okay_, Adam replied, lift off in _three, two, one... _We all jumped into the air with a powerful thrust from our legs and our wings quickly began to beat.

Actually taking control over the gnats flight made it much more sane and orderly. I found that I could hover in one spot just fine instead of rotating around a certain point if I wanted to. The others quickly found out the same thing, and before long we were all hovering in a nice little formation.

_Lets head for the light in three, two, one... _Adam said before quickly beginning to dart away from the group. My brother and I felt a "tug" in our minds as Adam shot away, and we quickly began to follow. The only problem was that the gnat was able to fly faster than it's mind could process the information it was receiving. At the speed we were flying the bright light at the bottom of the door grew to be a huge smudge in my field of vision. All I could do was follow Adam's lead which was easy enough to do by scent alone.

Eventually, the bright light from beneath the door took up my entire field of vision. I could feel myself bump into the bottom of the door and the floor once or twice, but soon enough we all exploded into the bright light of the hallway. I felt Adam stop and land a small distance ahead of me and I quickly put the breaks on myself. It took my senses a few seconds to adjust to the bright light, but once they did I was introduced to a whole new world of color. My human brain reminded me that I was in the hallway of my house, a place I'd walked through many times, but my fly brain saw something incredibly different.

First of all I couldn't see anything but shapes since everything was so far away, but I could tell that the door behind me was absolutely ginormous. It was like standing at the base of a cliff which reached up into the clouds and disappeared because it was so tall. I could barely see the outline of the small table across the hallway as well, and that seemed to tower over me like I was an insignificant piece of dust.

What I really noticed were the scuffs in the wood on the floor. It looked smooth and seemed smooth when I slipped on in while running in my socks, but down at this height I could see all the little scratches in the polyurethane coating. I actually had to be careful when I walked around so I wouldn't get one of my legs caught in a crack.

But size wasn't the only thing I noticed. There were strange colors all around me. It seemed, for some reason, that most things had a black hue to them. I could see some light passing through the front door window in the hallway, but it also seemed like there was a dark region over there as well. The colors I managed to see however were all wrong. There were a lot of blues in the hallway to my fly eyes, but I knew for a fact that there was nothing blue to my human eyes in the hallway at all. Some things gave off a greenish huge as well, but there was nothing that looked orange or red.

My field of vision was incredibly wide as well. Everyone knows that insects have compound eyes which contain hundreds of lenses, but my simple brain was somehow able to mold all those images together into one large span. I barely had to move my head to see anything, although I did have trouble seeing down below and directly in front of me.

_This is weird as hell,_ Adam said eventually.

_I know what you mean_, Tim said suddenly. _All the colors and sizes are all wrong_, I added in.

_Angie_, Adam called out after a moment, _how are you doing?_

_This is so freaky! _we all heard back. _I'm so confused right now, and flying is only making it worse! Did I mention that I hate this morph?_

_I believe you did, yes,_ Adam replied a little frustrated at Angie for not being able to cope. _Can you describe anything to help us find your position yet?_

_Um... I saw something cool looking a second ago_, Angie replied. After a moment of silence she came back with, _I found it again! Lets see... It's a big black square, but it seems to have a bright green border that seems pretty big around it. Does that help?_

_No, not really_, Adam said back trying to be humorous, _but I guess it's a start. Stay in that area and try and gather some more clues if you can while we try and find you._

Then Adam turned his attention back to us as he said, _Any idea what she's talking about?_

_Nope_, I said back. _Not a clue_, Tim added in.

_Well then_, Adam replied, _we'd better get searching. Lift off in three... two... one..._ And with that we all lifted off and started our search for Angie.

At first we just flew around and got use to the sights and smells of being a gnat. We tried not to travel too far though or else we'd risk really getting lost. When Angie wasn't able to give us any more details on her position besides there being more relatively small black squares in the area we finally decided to seriously go after her. Both Tim and I thought hard about what could be seen as a black square with a green border around it, but we kept coming up empty. Our only plan was to fly around aimlessly until we saw something that resembled what Angie was describing, and eventually we got a small lead.

_You guys see that over there? _Adam asked as we flew a good distance away from where we started. _ It's that kind of huge blackish thing off in the distance._

_I see it_, both Tim and I said almost in unison.

_It looks kind of squarish_, Adam replied. _Why don't we go check it out. At the very least we might be able to get a clue as to what's showing up as this black color to our eyes._

_Alright_, both Tim and I said. So we all sped off towards the large black blob.

We quickly managed to make it over to the blackish area, but it only came into clear view once we were very close to it. We eventually noticed that the black area was really a lighter black area surrounded by a darker black area, so we decided to land in the middle and work our way out if need be.

The moment we landed we all noticed that it was a smooth vertical surface, and that it was a bit colder than the rest of the house seemed to be. Everyone openly discussed what we could be standing on for a bit, but eventually Tim and I both came to the same conclusion at almost the same time. _We're on glass! _I said as Tim quickly agreed with me.

_That's why it seems so smooth, _Adam quickly added in. _I have no idea why it's dark since there should still be at least a little light outside, but maybe... Tom, Tim, what do you have in this house that's made of glass but is "relatively small"?_

We both thought for a moment before Tim finally said, _A picture frame! Our parents have a bunch of old photos in frames in their room on their dresser_, I added in. _That could be it!_

_Do you know how to get there from here? _Adam said excitedly.

_Um... _Tim said after a moment's silence.

_Well_, I picked up. _We're probably in the living room. That's where we have the nearest windows to the closet._

_If we go back and to the left we should be in the hallway again,_ Tim continued. _From there our parent's room is the first door on the right._

_Let's go_, Adam said back. _Lead the way._

Both Tim and I took off at the same time and raced to the hallway, almost leaving Adam behind in the process. We happened to be right about our position, and finding the open door to our parent's room wasn't all that hard after some of the practice we had. The moment we entered the room we knew that we had found Angie. We caught the slightest whiff of a new but familiar scent, and we were quickly drawn to it's source.

We heard Angie let out an, _Agh!_ before we all felt another member join our swarm.

_Hey Angie_, Adam called out, _miss us?_

_What the hell is going on? _Angie said as she began to circle around us.

_Don't fight it,_ I said quickly. _Learn to control it,_ Tim added.

_We think it's some kind of swarm detecting sense, _Adam said eventually. _It draws us together whenever we're close to one another. It makes it so much easier to fly in a group._

Angie's frantic circling had just about ceased by that point as she said, _I hate this morph more and more. Why the hell am I flying? I don't want to be flying. I hate flying. Lets go back and land somewhere._

_Like it or not we're going to be flying for quite some time,_ Adam said getting really annoyed. _ This is probably going to be our main infiltration morph, so whether you like it or not you better get use to it._

There was a silence after Adam's outburst, but eventually he was the first one to speak again. _Come on, lets give Angie a feeling for what it's like to fly as a group and navigate around._

Reluctantly we all began to follow his lead as he led us all around the house. Angie was quiet from that point on, but she also seemed to be a bit more comfortable about the whole gnat morph after we spent some time in it. Once we knew how to identify glass from a distance the whole navigating thing began to get a little bit easier, and after a while I thought we got pretty good at making our way from room to room and flying as a group.

Eventually, Adam had enough of being a gnat and gave the order to demorph. Angie flew off to some faraway place to do it while Tim, Adam, and I all decided to morph in the living room. After everyone was human once again Tim and I lead Adam and Angie back out to the woods so they could morph into their travel morphs and make their way back home. Once they were on their way the two of us went back into our house, marveling at how different everything looked now with human eyes, and made our way to our separate rooms. We still had to see how Alex and Billy handled the morph, but we seemed to be in good shape for whatever test Marvin had in store for us.


End file.
